


How You Keep Breathing

by Linpatootie



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Case Fic, Drowning, Londoners avoiding dealing with their emotions near bodies of water, M/M, also more headcanons than anyone ever needed, it's not mermaids, spoilers for the Broken Homes ending, this was supposed to be short what is my life what are my choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 14:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1391131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linpatootie/pseuds/Linpatootie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few weeks after the events in Broken Homes, Peter and Nightingale have to deal with multiple drownings in the Hampstead Ponds. The situation is messy. The relationship between England's only two officially sanctioned wizards even more so. Here's to the tiny fandom!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With all the gratitude in the world to my beta, Flutteringazure, who not only picked some fairly embarrassing mistakes out of the fic but also squeed about English wizards with me deep into the night on several occasions.

Normally I'd be a bit disgruntled about getting called out to a crime scene at five o’clock on a Friday morning, especially a crime scene located on the still rather nippy shores of the Hampstead Ponds up in North London. But then, this one happened only a month after Lesley abandoned us to run off with what I might rightfully call our nemesis, so I was glad for the distraction. Anything that kept me from staring at the door to what used to be her room, anyway.

The victim was a young woman, mid-to-late twenties, wearing a sporty blue swimming suit and a black swimming cap. She was athletic, strong, and looked like the kind of person who went swimming more often – it’s those tell-tale strong arms and shoulders, you can always tell a swimmer. She looked, in short, not like the kind of person who'd go and do something silly like drowning.

"Drowning victim," I said, standing by with my hands in my pockets. "Bit early in the year to go swimming, isn’t it?" 

"For you and me, maybe. There's loads of people who get their daily paddle in all through winter, apparently," Stephanopoulos said. She'd called me in with her usual lack of subtlety, barking me awake over the phone and staring me down as I'd gingerly made my way across the dew-slick grass. The Heath is a lovely bit of London, but any place will get sinister and unfriendly when you put a dead body in it at a particularly damp crack of dawn.

"The victim has been dead for at least 36 hours. A bloke walking his dog found her half-washed up on the shore two hours ago. We've not yet identified her - people don't quite keep their IDs tucked into their swimsuits, as it turns out." She sighed.

"And what, pray tell, am I doing here? Doesn't seem to be much policing of my particular brand necessary." Not at first glance, anyway, and her calling me in had me stumped. 

"She's the third one in two weeks," Stephanopoulos said. Ah. Yeah, that sort of number would ring a bell or two. 

Not a lot of people actually drown, see – a lot less than you’d think. The UK looks at about 400 to 420 drowning victims on a yearly basis, most of them, tragically, drunken idiots who topple over a railing somewhere. We get at most thirty people a year who drown while out swimming, and out of those it's really only about three or four who drown in lakes and reservoirs. 

Three in one pond in the span of two weeks would be the kind of exception that left me surprised there weren't any reporters hovering about the edges of the crime scene yet.

"And there's no sign of any foul play," Stephanopoulos continued. "It just feels fishy. No pun intended. I just wanted you three to look in on it. You two. Sorry." 

Her face scrunched together in apologetic embarrassment at the slip-up. It wasn't a very good look for her, not to mention one I didn't quite have a response to, so I forced a smile and tried not to look like I was having some kind of stroke.

People tiptoed around the matter of Lesley May. I can't say I didn't appreciate it, because I honestly didn't feel like broaching the subject matter with most. It felt too much like admitting defeat, owning up to a mistake, revealing the rather spectacular blind spot I'd touted about for months and months, and it was painful. 

It was painful to admit that my best friend betrayed me. It was painful to admit that I hadn't seen it coming at all.

Nightingale, too, avoided the subject the best he could. He wasn't able to do so regarding the more practical matters, like making sure she wouldn't be able to lead a magically hopped-up army of cat-people right into the Folly, but other than that he cheerfully veered around the existence of Lesley like she was a recently mopped floor and he was wearing particularly slippery shoes. 

The first week or two he’d even had an excuse for it, still working on the Varvara situation, but she’d been moved from the Folly to a relatively harmless location up in Cheshire a week back, newly-forged bracelet around her wrist. Snappy accessory and magical house arrest thingamajig all in one, and the Folly was once again ours alone, conveniently empty for bumbling about each other in convenient denial. 

Nightingale’s continued evasion of the subject did actually bother me, but to be honest I wasn't quite looking for a soul-bonding heart-to-heart with him about this either. I both did and didn't want to know whether he was as hurt by this as I was, mostly because I both did and didn't know whether that would serve to piss me off further. 

It was one thing for Lesley to have done this to me, but I didn't think I would really be able to handle the reality that she'd wounded someone I cared for. And to be honest, me classifying Nightingale as 'someone I cared for' as easily as that counted as an epiphany of a wholly different kind, and the subsequent personal crisis revolving around how deeply 'caring for' went and what the hell that said about the nature of my attachment to him were really miles beyond my emotional range. 

I was much better off smiling and pretending it hadn't happened, and really, dead bodies on the Heath helped a great deal with that. 

"All right. Well. I'll, ah, dive in." Pun intended. Stephanopoulos didn't look like she appreciated it much.

I crouched down by the girl, making sure not to slip and land face-first on her cold, wet bosom. I leaned in close, marvelled for just a moment at the cold radiating off of her like she'd just been pulled from a morgue freezer rather than a London body of water, and then the _vestigia_ hit me like a particularly soggy ton of bricks.

The sound of rushing water, a taste of something putrid in the back of my throat, and above all the strong scent of something green and wet. It smelled, to be precise, like a fish tank that hadn't been cleaned in weeks, that sickly smell of rotting water plants and fish faeces that informs you your goldfish are probably dead before you’ve even really stepped into the room. 

Oh yeah, this was magic, all right. A stinky, soggy, slimy kind of magic.

I straightened, turned to Stephanopoulos, and gestured helplessly. "One of ours. Sorry."

She looked so cross with me that for a moment I was worried she was going to shove me right into the damn pond.

**

A couple of hours and a thick stack of signed forms later, the girl was on Dr Walid’s table for the post-mortem. He was pleased, at least, even after receiving a phone call at eight in the morning from yours truly to call him in. I didn’t think I’d ever seen the man cranky, especially not if we got him something supernatural to peek into.

“Victim is female, 25 to 30 years old, Caucasian… cause of death most probably drowning, no other outward signs indicating otherwise,” he said, both into his voice recorder and to us.

“And she’s the third to drown in the Hampstead Ponds in two weeks?” Nightingale asked me, standing by Dr Walid’s table and regarding the dead girl with a polite mixture of sympathy and horror. 

He looked entirely too well-put together for the early hour, wearing an impeccable grey suit and looking like Molly had prepared him a nice proper breakfast before he left. I, meanwhile, was standing there with the cuffs of my jeans still soggy from trudging about in the damp grass, and was functioning entirely on hospital coffee and one unsatisfying Sainsbury’s muffin. 

Initially, when I called Nightingale in to give him an admittedly somewhat over-excited description of the _vestigia_ I’d found, he’d hardly reacted at all.

Then, when I mentioned to him the girl had drowned in the Heath, he’d all but jumped out of his skin and veered right into serious wizarding detective mode, like I’d somehow managed to say the magic word and the magic word was ‘Hampstead’. I thought it odd, but not odd enough to immediately ask after.

“Yes,” I said. “The previous two victims were both male, the first in his twenties, the other pushing fifty, with no obvious connection. One of the two wasn’t even a swimmer, they found him fully dressed. They’d assumed he’d toppled into the pond somewhere.”

“Three *is* a very alarming number,” Nightingale said.

“And paired with the frankly astonishing amount of vestigia our Jane Doe here is giving off…”

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” Nightingale said, conveniently finishing my sentence for me. 

Dr Walid got his scalpel out, and narrating himself into his tape recorder he set about performing the autopsy. I made a face and turned my back, but didn’t quite leave the room no matter how badly I wanted to. I mean, if Nightingale was sticking around, I sure wasn’t going to make an arse out of myself by leaving.

“This isn’t going to be about mermaids, is it? I don’t think I can handle mermaids,” Dr Walid said, far too conversationally for someone who was preparing to crack open a girl’s rib cage.

“Mermaids aren’t usually found in lakes,” Nightingale answered.

“Well, what do you find in lakes?” I asked, not sure if really wanted to know the answer.

“Not much of anything. The occasional kelpie, but they eat their victims, they don’t abandon them on the shore intact.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Not quite. I doubt it would be kelpies, though. They’ve become increasingly rare, and wouldn’t venture into an area so densely populated as London.”

“How come they’ve become rare?” I asked, turning back around to face Nightingale. The topic of conversation was simply too interesting for me not to, even if it meant braving an exposed chest cavity.

“Environmental factors, mostly,” he said.

“Like pollution?”

“Yes.”

“Huh, fancy that.”

“It’s tragic, but I doubt many people will consider the extinction of murderous water horses quite something to mourn,” Nightingale said with a shrug that told me that he, at least, didn’t. 

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Dr Walid said, both hands up in the girl’s lungs, deftly ruining an otherwise oddly educational conversation about kelpies. “The state of her lungs doesn’t correspond with the rest of her at all.”

“How so?” Nightingale asked.

Dr Walid straightened, giving him the rather hopeless look of a man whose science was failing him something awful. "Judging from her lungs, you'd say she's been under water for at least a week, if not longer. The rest of her, though, certainly hasn't been dead for more than 48 hours."

“So she stopped breathing a week ago, but didn’t die until two days back?” I said.

“It would seem so? Is that possible?” Dr Walid asked.

“You’re the doctor, you tell us,” Nightingale said.

“Well, it’s not, is it? A human body needs oxygen to survive. It’s very simple. Pump our lungs full of water and we’ll die.”

“And there’s no magical means of doing this? Getting oxygen to her without requiring her to breathe?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” Nightingale mused. “I imagine there might be a way, by adapting certain spells… but there’s not a practitioner in the world who would be able to keep something like that up for that long. I can’t even imagine why you’d want to. It’s not very practical.” 

I had to give him that. Even if you could keep someone alive without them having to breathe, why would you? It’s not like breathing was that strenuous an activity. 

My phone buzzed in my pocket, making me jump despite myself. Look, I can’t help it, I get tense around exposed internal organs. Nightingale raised an eyebrow at me, and I waved impatiently for the two of them to get on with the post-mortem while I answered. 

“Grant,” I answered, going for my best detective movie protagonist tone.

“Obviously,” Stephanopoulos quipped into my ear. “You getting on well with my victim? Say, this whole thing isn’t going to be about mermaids, is it?”

“Apparently not,” I said, side-eyeing the table where Dr Walid was pointing something out to Nightingale. Nightingale didn’t look too happy about it, whatever it was.

“Well, we’ve got her ID. Her name is Sarah Morris, she lived in Haringey. Her boyfriend reported her missing two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks?” I repeated.

“Yes. I’ll have her file mailed your way.”

“Thanks,” I said, already getting lost in thought. “Any more missing persons reported in the area?”

“This is London,” she said. “There’s always missing persons.” 

Well, there was a fun fact. I made a mental note of requesting a list to be sent my way, just in case.  
“You keep me posted, yeah,” Stephanopoulos ordered. “And I swear to God, if this *is* going to turn out to be mermaids, I’ll bloody well turn in my badge and run screaming into early retirement.” 

With that she hung up, leaving me to wonder what her reaction to kelpies might be. I tucked my phone away, and held my hands up in Nightingale and Dr Walid’s general direction. “Her name is Sarah Morris. She was reported missing two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks?” Nightingale repeated.

“That would match up with the damage to her lungs, though not much else,” Dr Walid said. “I can however confirm that the cause of death was absolutely drowning. There’s no further injuries, nothing to suggest there was even much of a struggle. She drowned. That’s it.”

“So she disappeared two weeks ago,” I said, summing up. “She didn’t breathe for all those two weeks, and then she drowned two days back?”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Nightingale said. “Why stop her from breathing for two weeks, only to have her drown in the end anyway?”

I looked at her, the dead girl laying exposed on the slab, and drew a fairly terrifying conclusion. “Something kept her under the water. Kept her *alive* under the water.”

At least Dr Walid had the good sense to look alarmed.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a riddle for you – what keeps a person under the water for two weeks, nullifies their necessity to breathe, and then drowns them in the end anyway? Not the kind of riddle you could just bullshit your way out of, and as such me and Nightingale both dove into our respective research corners to work some things out. He the Latin and Greek books, I the English ones, you understand. 

I didn’t become much wiser, even if I did wind up learning rather a lot about kelpies and mermaids. Nightingale had been right about the latter – they didn’t frequent lakes, instead spent most of their time in the more tropical oceanic regions, luring unsuspecting fishermen to their doom. It was all rather Pirates of the Caribbean, actually, although I made the mental note to keep myself from asking Nightingale about the Fountain of Youth. 

I imagined that theoretically a mermaid might have found its way into the Heath, but that didn’t explain how they’d keep a victim alive underwater – or why, for that matter. If the ancient illustrations were anything to go by, they sported a set of teeth to rival Molly’s, and that usually didn’t promise much in the way of keeping delicious morsels alive. 

After lunch, which was one of Molly’s questionably old-fashioned sandwiches involving unnecessary amounts of pickles, enjoyed over a pile of books and a Latin dictionary, I opted to go and scope out the Hampstead Ponds. I doubted I’d see anything there, but wanted to get a feel for the place anyway. At best, I’d find some remnants of _vestigia_. 

I was already on my way to fetch my car when Nightingale caught up with me. I expressed my surprise, and he looked annoyed.  
“Something might be snatching people into the water,” he said. “And you want to go wandering around on your own?” 

That was a fair point, even if he’d never been particularly picky about letting me go off to places before. I decided to ignore it, even if it was just because this meant we’d be going there in the Jag. Something can be said, after all, for travelling in style.

“The Hampstead Ponds,” he said as he smoothly turned the Jag onto Woburn Place, “have been around for a while.”  
“I know,” I said. “The Hampstead Ponds were originally dug in the seventeenth century, to serve as reservoirs, and dammed in 1777. They’ve been used for swimming since as early as 1860.” He looked at me in surprise, and I shrugged. “I do my homework, sir.”

He stopped at a traffic light, seemingly a bit offended by the light’s decision to go red just as we approached.  
“Do you think the Faceless might have something to do with this?" I asked.  
"I doubt it," he said quietly, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the road. "There are all sorts of evils in the world, Peter. Let’s not assume he’s responsible for all of them."

I knew that, but wanted it mentioned all the same. I watched Nightingale's slender fingers tighten around the steering wheel, and said nothing.

London passed by in a haze of camera-friendly late afternoon sunlight as he drove, crossing Regent’s Canal, driving across Camden. The Heath isn’t far from the Folly, not if you get to go there in a classic automobile expertly driven by your senior officer, and he turned the Jag onto the parking lot in a little under twenty minutes. 

Sarah Morris had been found in the Hampstead Mixed Pond, located in the centre of the Heath. Walking into the park, however, Nightingale turned decisively east, towards the Kenwood Ladies’ pond up the hill.

“Sir?” I said. “The body was found in the mixed pond.” I pointed my thumb in the general direction.  
“I know,” he said, pausing only briefly. “I need to go talk to someone first. If you don’t mind.”  
“Who?” 

He looked briefly uncomfortable, shifting his weight, but he shuffled his discomfort away quickly. “A ghost,” he said simply, before continuing on his way.  
“A ghost? At Hampstead Heath?” I asked, hurrying after him.  
“Ghosts can be found anywhere, Peter,” he said. “Even in the Heath.” 

“So who’s the ghost?” I asked. “Do you think he’ll be able to help us? Is he confined to the ladies’ pond?” It wasn’t until after that particular sentence left my mouth that I realised that the location probably meant the ghost was a ‘she’. Oh, well. Nightingale skilfully ignored all of my questions, anyway.

“It’s best I speak to her alone, she gets easily distressed. Wait here until I come back,” he said, not quite ordering me to stay put but not asking very politely either. I did as I was asked but made sure to keep him in my line of sight – he was the one who’d pointed out the Heath might have water monsters in it waiting to drag any unsuspecting passer-by into the deep, after all.

The pond was very still. It was close to dusk, it was chilly, and nobody in their right mind would go swimming there right now. There were some joggers in the distance, but nothing to alarm me. 

Nightingale stood close enough to the water’s edge to make me feel a little apprehensive, peering out across the pond with the kind of thoughtfulness that deserved a nicely filtered Instagram picture. I could see him sigh, resigned to whatever it was he was doing. He cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, once, across the water.

“Beatrice!” 

That was not very subtle, and not at all what I had expected. A laugh bubbled up in my throat, and while I did my best to hold it back it still came out a lopsided giggle. No matter, not like he was close enough to hear me, anyway.

He did it again, then stood there for a while, arms crossed. It took me a moment to figure out he was talking. It took me a longer moment to figure out he was talking to the ghost.

I don’t know when she appeared. Shortly after he’d called her for the second time, surely, but she was difficult to see, even for a ghost. In the murky light, her small translucent form only just showed against the backdrop of the dark grey water. She was barely there at all.

It was a girl, sixteen or seventeen years old if I had to guess. She was wearing a swimming costume, either black or dark blue, the old-fashioned kind that went down nearly to her knees and laced up neatly on the back. She had her hair tied up with a striped scarf, a dainty bow on the side of her head. 

Judging from the outfit, she must have died somewhere in the early twentieth century, which implied things about her connection to Thomas ‘oh by the way, I was born at the turn of the century, did I forget to mention that?’ Nightingale I didn’t really want to think about.

She was also wet. Not just damp or soggy, but genuinely dripping, like she was standing in a very personalised torrent of rain. Incorporeal water poured from her arms and legs, and every so often she seemed to cough and send mouthfuls of water down her chin. Was that what you looked like, if you died of drowning? Would Sarah Morris haunt the shores of the Mixed Pond like that, perpetually spewing water from her unused lungs?

She started crying about halfway through their conversation. It was a confused, panicked sort of crying, bordering on angry. She seemed to be trying to bicker with Nightingale, but to my surprise, all Nightingale did was look exasperated and tired as he did his best to reason with her. 

She disappeared as quickly as she’d come. I checked to make sure, stepping left and right to see if it wasn’t just a trick of the light, but she was really gone. Nightingale stood quietly for a moment, then straightened, squaring his shoulders and raising his chin, and turned on his heel in a way I couldn’t describe in any other way than military. 

He spotted me as he walked back up, and looked surprised enough for it to imply he’d completely forgotten about me standing there.  
“Was she able to tell you anything?” I asked. 

He sighed. “No. Unfortunately. I didn’t think she would be able to, but it was worth a try. She gets… confused.” He looked down at the tips of his unbelievably expensive shoes. “She doesn’t always realise that she’s dead.” The statement saddened him a great deal, in a way that somehow managed to cut right into me. I was grabbed by the unmistakable urge to reach out and take his hand, which I deftly buried by shoving both hands into the pockets of my trousers.

You don’t just take your governor’s hand, see. Not even if he’s just had a discussion with a ghost and came back looking exhausted and heartbroken. Not even if exhausted and heartbroken looks fucking devastating in those unreadable grey eyes of his.

“Going to tell me who she is? Beatrice?” I asked, knowing I asked in vain. Nightingale didn’t even acknowledge the question, simply sighed and wondered aloud what Molly would be preparing for dinner that night as we plodded on down the hill. I made do with it, mostly because I honestly didn’t know how to pry open those steel doors he’d spent the better part of a century welding around himself.

**

Our walk around the Mixed Pond was a bit of a bust. We got a nice walk in, worked up an appetite and got about the most fresh air one can get in London, but found nothing of use. Even the area where Sarah Morris was found gave us nothing to go on. 

At some point I thought I saw something, but it turned out to be a couple of ducks. It was all very not exciting, and I busied myself trying not to think about how I basically just had a nice stroll through the park with my boss, at sunset. No _vestigia_ , no suspicious splashing about the water. 

I wondered if next time I should bring Toby, because he’d like the exercise, but that only reminded me of what happened to Scully’s dog on The X-Files and made my brain go into odd, geeky corners full of ancient sea creatures.

“We’re not dealing with the Loch Ness monster, are we?” I asked Nightingale at some point.  
“If Nessie decided to go on a holiday to London, we’d know about it. She’s a bit too big to fit into the Hampstead Ponds, see,” Nightingale answered cheerfully. “We’d sooner find mermaids. And allow me to repeat - it’s not mermaids.” 

I tried getting more out of him on the Nessie subject – yeah, like I was going to let that one go – but he told me to focus on our surroundings instead. Sometimes I think he gives me these morsels just to drive me mad, I really do.

I didn’t broach the subject of Beatrice the soggy ghost girl again. Never mind how much I wanted to know, never mind how good it probably would have been for me to try digging at Nightingale a little. I wouldn’t have known where to find the right words to use, anyway. 

We returned to the Folly slightly disillusioned , and found Molly had dinner almost ready for us. I had just about enough time to fire up HOLMES, in order to dig up that missing persons list from the area, and had a bit of a shock when I saw just how long it was.

As a cop, you know people go missing. London is a big city, and big cities are prime places for disappearing into. You just don’t realise how many people up and actually do so until you’re looking at a list of names, and you know that if you really want this to be in any way useful to your magic murder investigation, you’re going to have to figure out how to narrow it down. 

I sighed, printed it out, and took it with me to dinner to discuss with Nightingale.

Molly had made us fish. I really wish I was kidding. Cod, with capers and mushy peas, boiled potatoes on the side. It was surprisingly good, if in oddly bad taste. She was suppressing something of a grin as she served it, and I could’ve sworn I heard her giggle as she disappeared down the hall. I raised an eyebrow at Nightingale.

“She’s going to serve us seafood every day for as long we’re working this case, isn’t she.”  
Nightingale grinned. “I think she might just , yes.”

I didn’t spring the list on him right away. I do have the good manners to at least wait until a man has gobbled down his main course. I finished mine before he finished his, and, despite myself, spent a cold few minutes staring at the glaringly empty seat at the table. 

Nightingale noticed it. He paused with his fork halfway up to his mouth, eyebrows raised, then noticed me noticing him and returned to his food with such gusto that for a moment I was worried he’d up and choke on it. I cleared my throat, reached for my water glass, and drank it as casually as I could manage. 

It’s a miracle I didn’t pour it down my front, really. 

After Molly cleared our plates, before she brought us whatever she had concocted for dessert, I passed him the missing persons list. He sighed.

“Well, that’s not very useful. All in the Hampstead area?”  
I nodded. “I’ll admit I took a wide scope, but damn. On the up side, the pond isn’t big enough for all of them to be kept at the bottom of it.”  
“If you put it like that, I’d almost be tempted to get a crew of divers down there.” He slid the list back across the table.

“Could we?”  
“Probably not a crew. One or two. Frank Caffrey might be of assistance. Problem is, as long as I don’t know what exactly we’re dealing with, I’m a touch apprehensive to send people down there to go looking.”

He made a good point. Molly arrived with dessert, which turned out to be a fairly innocuous rice pudding. I dug in happily under her fairly critical gaze, nodding at her to indicate my approval.

“So what now?” I asked as we ate.  
“Go over your missing persons list. Narrow it down to people who went missing in the past two weeks, see if there are any people on it prone to visiting the Heath?” Leg work, or in other words, tedious activity traditionally to be performed by the junior officer, also known as me. 

“I want to have more surveillance in the area,” he continued. “I’d rather like to close the Ponds off entirely, but I doubt I’ll be able to easily arrange that with the City of London’s Hampstead Heath department.” Not if he was going to open his request with kelpies, anyway. Or mermaids. 

My phone buzzed in my pocket. “Excuse me,” I said, out of habit, and answered. Stephanopoulos again.

“A woman disappeared near the Ponds about an hour ago. She and her husband were jogging along the Mixed Pond and, according to him, he only looked away from her for a second. Turned around, and she was gone. You coming?” 

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I said, already pushing back from the table.  
“Try to make it ten,” she said, and hung up the phone.


	3. Chapter 3

I spent my entire evening trudging through the Heath in the dark, surrounded by cops, cop dogs, and mosquitoes. The missing woman's name was Chantou Ray, 43 years old, a round-faced Desi woman. She sported a pleasant smile in the photograph which had been distributed to us, and had a desperate husband who kept walking around in confused circles and getting on Stephanopoulos' nerves.

They had been jogging, and she had lagged behind for really no longer than a few minutes. The husband had turned around to make a joke about that, and she'd been gone. He claimed to have heard nothing - no shouts, no sounds of struggle, and certainly not any kind of splash that indicated she might've gone into the water.

The Met sent a couple of divers into the pond regardless. I watched them anxiously, not in the least to see if some prehistoric sea serpent was going to rise from the depths and gobble them up, but nothing happened. They found nothing - no sea serpents, no kelpies, and no Chantou Ray.

"Can you guarantee that this really isn't going to be about mermaids?" Stephanopoulos had asked me carefully, standing on the shore and watching the divers climb back into their boat.

"No," I answered. "But mermaids are typically found in the Atlantic Ocean, not London ponds. The odds are about the same as it being a bottlenose dolphin."  
"I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that."

There was no sign of poor Chantou Ray, and I returned to the Folly a little after one AM, leaving a near-hysterical Mr. Ray to a much-annoyed Stephanopoulos. I saw her pawn him off on one of her officers as I got into my car, and only hoped we could get him his wife back alive. 

Despite the late hour, Nightingale was still up, and waiting for me. It was unusual for him to do so, but I didn't comment on it.  
"I take it you didn't find her?" he asked.

"No sign at all. No _vestigia_ , either." I sighed, and ran my hands down my face. "I can only assume she's under water somewhere, being kept alive. I just hope we won't find her drowned in a week or so."

“Did they check the pond?"  
"Yes. Stephanopoulos sent in a whole team of divers, but no dice."

"That's odd," he said. "If there is something in that water, and it is keeping people under..."  
"Would there be ways to cloak that?"  
"There are certain types of glamour. That is a worrying notion, though, lord knows how many people they'd be hiding down there if that was the case."

I nodded. I felt weary, stretched thin. It had been a long day, after all. Nightingale must have noticed, as he looked at me with some concern.

"Go get some rest," he ordered. "I shall contact Stephanopoulos in the morning. I want Abdul to have a look at the other two victims, and see if he draws the same conclusion about the time they spent under water as he did about Sarah Morris."

I nodded again, and wished him a good night. He watched me as I went up the stairs - I all but felt his worried eyes burn a hole right into my back. I didn't look back, beelined for my room and slept like the dead.

**

The next morning I holed myself up in the coach house with my missing persons list and a bucket of coffee. It was tedious work, not to mention deeply depressing. Far too many names on the list belonged to kids under eighteen, and far too many of them were probably never going to be found again.

Lesley's parents had reported her as missing, I knew that. She wasn't on my list, as she simply didn't meet the criteria I'd used for it, but the idea of her name being on a list like this one left a sour taste in the back of my mouth that no amount of Molly's frightfully strong coffee could wash away. 

I sighed with unnecessary vigour and pushed away from the desk, walked in a somewhat aimless circle around the room before finally plopping down on the couch. Feet up, head down, the whole shebang that Nightingale would probably reprimand me for.

The case bothered me. Three people dead, at least one more in danger of meeting the same end, and a whole slew of names on my missing persons list who may or may not be chained to the bottom of a pond along with her. No idea what was doing this, or why, or even how. I felt like we were missing something really important, and it frustrated me. I don't mind solving puzzles, I just like having all the puzzle pieces available to me first.

I wrestled my phone from the pocket of my jeans, which isn’t an easy feat when you’re trying to remain as boneless as possible. No messages. I can’t say I’ve ever been Mr. Popular, but you know, I have people, and the empty phone screen just made me feel sorry for myself. I scrolled through my contact list, and when I passed the name of a certain river I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me to ring her up about this earlier.

"Well, what do you know, he's learned how to use a phone," Beverley Brooke said as she answered. "Welcome to the 21st century, constable Grant!"  
"Funny," I answered. "You're a funny girl."  
"And you're a prick, but I'll do my best not to hold it against you. How've you been?"

I knew what she was aiming at with that question, and I didn't like it. She'd considered Lesley a friend. What side of this conflict would I find the rivers on, anyway? I reminded myself that paranoia isn't a good look for anyone, and sat up a little more.

"Alright. Been better, but I've been worse." Like when I was trapped under a couple layers of concrete under Oxford Circus, for example. "You hear anything from her?"

"Not a peep. I take it you haven't, either?"  
"No," I said. "Nothing. I asked Zach, but he hadn't either."  
"Doubt he'd tell you if he had, though." 

Yeah, I'd concluded that myself, too. Couldn't even blame him for it. What loyalty did he owe me, after all?

"Hey, did you hear about the people who drowned in the Hampstead Ponds?" I asked, swiftly changing the subject in what I supposed was a rather Nightingalean fashion.

"I'm not magically aware of everything that happens in London bodies of water, Peter," she said tartly.  
"So you haven't heard about it?"

She sighed irritably. "I read about it in the paper, okay. I do *read*."

I grinned in a way that made me glad she wasn't there to see it, cause she might've thumped me on the head for it. "So what do you think? Mermaids?"  
"In London? Don't be silly."

"Nightingale mentioned kelpies."  
"Not likely, but still more so than mermaids. Might just be something else entirely, though. A spell placed on the water?"  
"To what purpose? It doesn't make sense."

I could just *hear* her shrug. I was hit with the distinct urge to ask her what she was wearing, just because. I hoped it was low-cut, because the mental images were fantastic.

“You really don’t know anything, though? Nothing that passed through the rivers?” Okay, so maybe I was thinking ancient sea serpents again.

“Not mine. You should ask Fleet. Her headwater springs feed the Hampstead Ponds.”  
I didn’t tell I’d much rather ask her, because then she’d like to know the why, and considering the both of us knew pretty damn well why, that conversation would just get awkward. 

“Don’t you notice if people are drowning, though?” I asked her.  
“I would if it was in my river,” she said. “I try to stop that, you know. You really think I like having dead people all up in my water? Deeply unsanitary, for one.”

I had to give her that one. Couldn’t be a lot of fun, having to pick bodies off yourself like bugs off a windscreen. 

“We do pretty well to stop things like that from happening though,” she said proudly. “Did you know only about four people drown in rivers in a year? Compare that to the seven or eight who drown in the sea. Ha!”

“Yes, good job, well done,” I said. “But in that case I can’t imagine Fleet is too happy about the three already drowned in ponds fed by her springs.”  
“We can’t be held responsible for every drop of water connected to us,” Beverley said."Did you look up past incidents though?" 

"Yes, like I said, three drownings in the past two weeks." I answered distractedly.  
"No, further back. I'm talking months, maybe years. What's the history of the place?"

I couldn’t tell her. She went off at me for that just a little, about how old places like the Heath have histories that never really die, but all I could wonder about was why Nightingale hadn’t thought of this either.

Then I remembered the soggy ghost girl, and realised maybe he *had*. I said goodbye to Beverley, who protested even as I was already hanging up, and fired up HOLMES again. 

It wasn’t an easy search. I looked for drowning-related deaths in the Heath for the past five years, but found nothing. I figured maybe five years wasn’t long enough, so I did it again for ten, but it still returned zero search results. So no people drowned there for ten years, and then there were three in two weeks?

I got unreasonably agitated by that conclusion. It’s not that I desperately wanted the place to have more deaths attributed to it, but come on. Gut instinct. I was onto something. I had to be. A river spirit told me to look into this, after all - anyone of even a little bit of faith would put stock in that.

I decided to just search back all the way for twenty years, even if it was just so I could tell Beverley I gave it my best. It took a little while for the machine to spit something up, but spit it did. 

1999, June. Two people drowned. First a man named Roger Owley, in the Highgate Men’s Pond. He’d gone missing at night, and his body was found a week later. They’d assumed alcohol had played a role, and closed the case.

Two weeks later another incident, when a woman named Clarissa Fey drowned in the Mixed Pond. She disappeared in broad daylight, when more people were swimming around her, and her body turned up three days later. They’d attributed the death to ‘natural causes’. 

I stared at my screen. Fifteen years ago, and the whole thing sounded entirely too much like what was happening now. Incensed, I let HOLMES whir all the way back across thirty years, to 1984. It took a little while again, time which I spent rather tragically glued to my screen waiting to see if I was right, and I almost cheered when it turned out that, yes, I was.

1984, May. A young man named Amir Duncan had drowned in the Men’s Pond. He’d gone missing a whopping three weeks prior to the discovery of his body. 

So now we had a total of six bodies, over the span of thirty years, with neat intervals of fifteen years in between. That was a *pattern*. Us coppers, we *like* patterns.

I sat back and looked at the search screen for a moment, thinking hard. I had to know. I just had to. 

I typed in the criteria, and let HOLMES search back all the way across the 20th century. If the machine had a finger it would’ve given it to me at that point, and I fancied I could just about hear its old bones creaking as it set to work. 

It was going to be a while, and I was far too restless by then to sit back and wait for it. I decided to make the best of it, fetched Toby’s leash and took him out for walkies. 

At least he was glad for the unexpected outing, and I was glad for the fresh air. It was win-win, though perhaps not so much for Molly, as Toby wound up dragging half a park’s worth of dirt into the Folly when we came back.

HOLMES has finished searching by the time I stumbled back into the coach house. I felt oddly anxious as I clicked open the search results, and wasn’t sure to be terribly excited or horribly depressed when my theory proved true.

The first result was 1999. Then 1984, followed by 1969 and, indeed, 1954. It went on, giving me a date every fifteen years. Every fifteen years at least one or two people were drowned in the Hampstead Ponds. I all but flailed across the keyboard, and quickly printed the list and the corresponding case files. 

I kept grabbing the sheets of paper off the printer as they came out, scanning them as they did. I’d found something. I’d found a genuine pattern, even if I couldn’t make sense of it, even if I couldn’t for the life of me understand what it indicated. Was this the cycle followed by some magical creature? Were we dealing with an undead, underwater serial killer?

The printer finished, and I whisked the last of the list off the tray. I put the pages in order, gave them a once-over, and found what on some level I knew I’d be finding but had staunchly pretended I wasn’t going to after all.

All the way at the bottom of the list, attached to the oldest date I had unearthed, a name caught my attention. Did more than catch it, actually – it grabbed hold of it with both hands, then smacked it across the face a couple times for good measure.

‘August 1909 – Beatrice Nightingale’


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> with many thanks for the lovely Trialia for running a firm British hand through this - wouldn't have had the same _Rivers of London_ flavour without it :)

Beatrice Nightingale was born in February 1893 and died, at the tender age of sixteen, in August 1909. She and two of her friends had gone swimming in the Kenwood Ladies' Pond on a hot summer afternoon. At some point both her friends lost sight of her, and she was found five hours later, tangled up in some water plants near the shore. The officials had dubbed her death a tragic accident, case closed.

Because I'm a prick and because it’s easier to ask personal questions of the internet than my governor, I googled her and found an ancient obituary that had her down as being survived by both her parents and six siblings.

I doubt anyone would've expected one of those six to still be very much alive 105 years later, though.

The obituary offered a grainy black-and-white portrait of an unsmiling but not unpleasant-looking girl, with dark hair worn up in what I suppose would have been fashionable ringlets. Despite the poor picture quality, I still recognised those sharp grey eyes of hers: they were just like the eyes that scrutinised me from across the dinner table most nights.

She was also most definitely the soggy ghost girl I'd seen Nightingale speak with. This implied a whole bunch of things, and I didn’t like any of them. 

I wasn’t sure whether to hug him or hit him for all this, to be honest, but the scale was tipping in the direction of the hug, and that was the worst idea anyone had ever had in the history of mankind, possibly even surpassing trying to invade Russia during winter.

I had about an hour until he returned to the Folly to figure it out, but I spent most of it pacing and getting my thoughts lined up neatly. Might just as well have spent that hour playing Angry Birds. As soon as I spotted him walking across the atrium the entire speech I’d prepared in my head fell apart and I all but tumbled towards him, brandishing the print-outs like a Jehovah’s Witness trying to sell the _Watchtower_. 

“I found a pattern,” I said, just a little too eagerly. “Every fifteen years. Every fifteen years people have drowned in the Hampstead Ponds. It’s spaced out far enough to avoid arousing suspicion, it’s why nobody’s apparently made that connection before.” 

I handed him the file and he started leafing through it, instantly dead serious. 

“See, there’s 1999, 1984, 1969... it’s one or two people, every fifteen years.” 

He nodded, looking at the names and dates mentioned at the top of the files. I’d ordered them neatly, paper clips and clearly legible tags and all. That alone should serve to impress him, quite apart from the fact that I actually found something useful. “How far back did you look?” he asked.

“A while,” I said awkwardly. He looked up at me, one eyebrow raised, and I honestly didn’t know how else to bring it up. 

“I know about Beatrice,” I blurted.

“Oh,” was all he said, not as surprised as I thought he would be.

“Your sister. She was your sister, wasn’t she? I found a record of her death. She drowned in the Hampstead Ponds in 1909.”

He shut the file and looked up at me, squaring his shoulders, raising his chin. “Yes. Yes, she was, and yes, she did. I knew you’d figure it out, eventually. I should have told you. My apologies.”

“That’s... fine.” I frowned at his apology. I hadn’t been expecting it, and now that I’d got it, I realised I hadn’t needed it from him at all. “It’s personal, I suppose. I get it. It’s all right.”

He sighed briefly, going back to leafing through the file, neatly avoiding any kind of personal turn this conversation had been in danger of making. “So someone drowned in the Hampstead Ponds every fifteen years, dating back to the early 20th century.”

“Yes. I imagine the cycle might be even older than that, dating back to at least 1894 and maybe further. The only thing I can’t figure out is why it’s more victims this time around. Before it was only one or two people, in the space of a few weeks. Now we’ve already got three dead, and at least one more missing.”

“That is odd, I agree. Good work, Peter. This gives us more to go on.”

That made me feel unbelievably good about myself. I almost wished for a sticker, one of those gold stars I could’ve stuck on my forehead. 

“It will be hard to find more information about the older cases, though,” he said, rifling through the file again. “I doubt we’ll even find something useful from the 1999 case.”

“What about Beatrice?” I said. He winced, but I pushed on. “She was there, right? I know it’s difficult because she’s your sister, but she might be able to help us.”

“The girl in the pond is not my sister,” he said so sharply that I winced this time. “A ghost is not a person. A ghost is merely a memory, an imprint left on a certain location after a particularly traumatising event. She walks and talks like my sister, but she’s not my sister. My sister is dead.” 

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” I said. He looked up at me, and made a face. I reckon he had about as much use for my apology as I’d had for his.

“It’s not a bad idea, I grant you that much. I doubt she’ll be of much help, though. As I told you before, she gets confused.” 

“Not even worth a try?” I attempted carefully. I watched him struggle with it, fingers playing across the edges of the file in a way that made it seem he wasn’t even aware that he was doing so.

“Maybe,” he finally offered. “I suppose she does count as a witness, unreliable though she might be.” 

Had she been a live girl, we’d have interviewed her even if she were related to him. It’s that simple, really. It’s part of the job. And honestly now, if we were looking at murders that dated all the way back to 1909, how convenient was it to have a witness who had been present ever since? 

Nightingale shut the file again, and hugged it to his chest. He didn’t have to tell me he was uncomfortable with the idea, it was written all over his face, his posture. A big part of me wanted to coddle that, wanted to get him a cuppa and tell him we could just keep on digging through old files and hope for the best, but another part of me, probably the stubborn part that really really liked solving crimes, knew this was the cleverest plan of action for now. 

He sighed deeply. “I will be doing most of the talking, so you’re aware.”

As he was the senior officer, I’d pretty much counted on that.

** 

Nightingale insisted on waiting for dusk again. Less people in the park near closing time, he said, to witness us talking to a dead girl. On his orders, I spent most of my afternoon down in the firing range, practising my fireballs. It wasn’t a bad idea, as it allowed me to channel some of the nervous energy I’d worked up over the course of the day. 

As sunset approached, I changed into a pair of jeans and my trusty Docs, and waited for Nightingale in the reading room. He came downstairs in a dark blue suit no one in their right mind would go slogging about the Heath in, but wearing those sturdy lace-up shoes I recognised to mean he did, actually, mean business. 

We didn’t speak as we drove to the Heath. I kept glancing over to him, but he kept his eyes on the road, and I honestly didn’t know what to say. What topic of conversation was appropriate for when you were driving somewhere to talk to a bloke’s dead sister, anyway?

Just as we’d done before, we trudged up the hill to the Ladies’ Pond together. Just as before, he stood at the edge of the pond and called out her name. Only difference was I was standing right beside him this time, nervously eyeing him and wondering how often he came here to see her.

I was just about to ask him about that when she popped up. She appeared on the other side from him, nearly giving me a heart attack, and ignored me altogether for the first few minutes. I was oddly grateful, as it gave me some time to adjust.

“Thomas,” she said, speaking with the same crisp RP accent Nightingale did. “You’re here. You never visit me any more.”

“I visited you just a few days ago,” he said gently. “Remember? I came to see you.”

She scrunched her face together. Up close, I could tell she had been a good-looking child. If given the chance, she would probably have grown into a beautiful woman. I felt miserable about that, as she stood there steadily dripping ghostly water onto the grass. 

I marvelled at that water. All the ghosts I’d seen before had looked quite normal, apart from being see-through. No headless horsemen or bloody barons, just people looking like they had when they’d been alive. She didn’t. She looked the way you’d expect someone to look while they were drowning still. 

“Who’s that?” she asked sharply, and I realised she’d meant me.

“Beatrice, this is Peter. He’s my apprentice,” Nightingale said.

“But he’s a black boy,” she said, scrunching her face together again. There was no malice in her words. She hadn’t meant it disapprovingly, simply standing there as a product of her time confronted with something new, and I couldn’t even fault her for it. 

“He’s very gifted,” Nightingale said with a small smile, and I felt unbelievably flattered. He’d never said something like that about me before – at least, not where I could hear him.

“Nice to meet you, Beatrice,” I said politely. She didn’t respond, just looked from me to Nightingale and back in a way that told me she had absolutely no idea what to make of what she was seeing.

“How can you have an apprentice?” she asked then, and I could hear the first hints of panic creeping into her voice. “You’re too young to have an apprentice. Thomas?”

Defeat fell over Nightingale’s face. “No, I’m not, Beatrice.”

“No, but... I don’t...” she stammered.

“How old do you think I am?” he asked gently. She didn’t answer. “Look at me, Beatrice. Do I look nine to you?”

She shook her head, her bare arms coming up to hug herself. “I don’t understand,” she said feebly.  
“Do you know what year it is?” he asked. 

She struggled with the question, blinking rapidly. She was going to cry, and she was going to cry soon, and I had no idea how to console a deeply confused teenage ghost. “Nineteen...?” she tried, not finishing whatever year she was going to guess.

“No,” Nightingale said softly. “That’s not what year it is. I’m sorry, Beatrice.”

Her lip quivered, and she began to cry quietly. More water poured down her face and she shivered underneath it, spitting it out when it trickled into her open mouth. Nightingale hadn’t been lying – she was confused, and terrified because of it. I’d never felt quite so bad for a ghost before, but really, I felt worse for Nightingale.

His face had turned absolutely to stone. He was staring ahead and down, at where the dark water gently washed up against the pond’s edge, and seemed to be doing his very best to emotionally detach himself from the whole scene. “Beatrice, I need your help with something. Can you help me?” he said, his voice extremely measured and even.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice quivering.

“Yes, you do. It’s about your pond, Beatrice. Things have been happening in your pond, haven’t they?”

“No, I don’t know!” she said again, more firmly. A gush of water bubbled up from her mouth and she coughed it out. I stood by, feeling about as helpless as I’d ever been.

"Beatrice, try to focus. Have there been things happening in your pond?" he repeated, a little less gently this time. She inhaled a shaky breath, even if I was fairly certain ghosts had absolutely no use for something like oxygen, and gazed out across the water as if she'd only just remembered the pond was there at all.

"No?" she said, sounding unsure. "Not in my pond?"

"Yes, they have," Nightingale said. "This week. A lady drowned in your pond. Do you remember?"

She looked out across the pond again, then back at him, and nodded decisively. "Yes. A lady. A dark-skinned one, like your apprentice."

I gave her an odd look. "Do you mean Chantou Ray? She didn't drown, did she? The lady who drowned was white."

"Sarah Morris didn't drown in the Ladies' Pond," Nightingale reminded me, not taking his eyes off Beatrice. "Did you see the dark-skinned lady, Beatrice? Because we're looking for her. Her family misses her."

Beatrice shrugged slowly. "I can't tell. Sometimes things happen now, sometimes before. Sometimes they haven't happened yet at all. The water makes it difficult to see."

"Things did happen before, didn't they?" Nightingale asked, once again speaking as gently to her as if she was an agitated baby bunny. "Things happen every fifteen years, don't they?"

"I don't know about fifteen years," she said defensively. "Things just happen sometimes. Quiet things. No screaming or anything, just quiet things. Sinking." She frowned again, blinking rapidly, shrinking back as if something was fluttering in her face. Little rivulets of water ran down her forehead and nose, from underneath the scarf tied around her hair. "Something happened to me too? I can't remember if I screamed?"

"You didn't," Nightingale said quietly. "Do these people just sink, Beatrice? Or does something make them go down?"

She looked at him suddenly, as devastated as if he'd struck her across the face. "It sings," she said, her voice so soft it was almost a whisper.

"It sings?" he repeated. "What do you mean?"

The panic returned to her face, and she lashed out. “I don’t know! You’re not being very nice to me, and I’m telling Mama!” 

“For God’s sake, Mama has been dead for ninety-four years,” he snapped, and his face was full of regret immediately. She snapped her mouth shut, and while I was expecting her to just have a flat-out meltdown she simply shot him the kind of angry look I’m fairly certain only siblings can manage amongst each other and disappeared.

We both stood in silence for a while, digesting what had just happened, until he sighed and turned. “I’d expected this. I feel compelled to apologise, regardless.”

“No need,” I said.

As we walked away from the water, I noticed how drawn he looked. I really wanted to say something, but came up short. He noticed me looking, and offered me a sad smile.

“Sometimes I rather wish I still had the option of holding her, when she gets so upset,” he said simply. It was the most heartbreaking thing I’d ever heard him say, and it stuck with me even after I’d gone to bed and was staring at my ceiling wondering where the knot buried deep in my chest had come from. 

All I could think, and this was exceptionally silly of me, was that this time I should have taken his hand, and my fingers ached with how much I regretted that I hadn’t.


	5. Chapter 5

I spent my morning perusing case files from 1999. It felt a little odd to be going through files dating back to a time when I was a boppy pre-teen nursing my first ever celebrity crush (on Baby Spice, you understand), but then it'd probably have been weirder to be going all the way back to cases from a decade where it would have been Nightingale skipping cheerfully through that phase in his life.

Though I have to say, I didn't think kids really had celebrity crushes in 1909. Who would he have been crushing on, anyway? I wasted some time on Google, trying to find out who would've been hot around 1910, but that was something of a bust. It was all silent film, which I knew exactly nothing about, and I had no idea if a teenage Nightingale would even have been into all that.

Still, considering the unexpected revelation that he did, actually, enjoy the cinema, it wouldn't surprise me if he had been. I spent a while looking at old photos of actresses like Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford, women I'd never heard of in my life, and wondered if these were the kinds of people 1910 teenagers would have gone all fluttery over. 

One problem, though, was that I couldn't imagine Nightingale fawning over those ladies at all, mostly because I was still fairly convinced Nightingale wasn't the type to fawn over ladies in the first place. Then again, it wasn't like a young bloke could openly moon over his favourite male celebrities in 1915 either, and that just made me feel decidedly awkward for a while.

Comforted to know that at least Nightingale didn't have the technological know-how to peek at my Google search history, I went back to the case. There really wasn't a lot to go on and, as it turned out, the one witness mentioned would be fairly difficult to question as she had passed away four years ago. Demotivated, I abandoned my computer for a bit to take a breather, but didn't dare call the whole thing a waste of time just yet.

I made Nightingale approach Beatrice his soggy ghost sister for information, after all. The least I could do after that was research these cases until I was so tired my eyes fell out of my head. 

The thing that got me from the few titbits we did manage to pull from Beatrice was the mention of singing. To me, that just smacked of mermaids again, no matter how staunchly Nightingale kept insisting those couldn’t be the culprits. Could there be sirens in the Hampstead Ponds? The idea was ridiculous, but to be fair, so were trolls in the suburbs, and we'd encountered one of those before. 

Decidedly refreshed after a brisk walk with Toby and a somewhat unfortunate tuna sandwich for lunch - Molly still seemed to find the whole seafood joke endlessly funny - I went back to work. Rather than focus on the drowning, I pulled up a list of incidents in the Heath taking place in the three months surrounding them. An unsurprising amount of drunk and disorderly citations, one vaguely mind-boggling incident where a girl broke a guy's nose for nicking a bottle of orange juice from her picnic basket, and then one that did deserve closer inspection. 

In late May of 1999, a man named Fred Booker reported an assault that took place by the Hampstead Mixed Pond. According to his report, someone jumped out of the pond and tried dragging him in. He only survived because, in his own delightful words, he'd banged the bloody hell out of the bastard with his umbrella. 

Now that I could work with. I looked him up, and was delighted to find Mr. Booker was alive and well and currently living in Brixton. He was a bit surprised when I rang him to ask about something he reported fifteen years ago, but seemed the kind of fellow who enjoyed talking about himself enough to relish every opportunity to do so. 

I went to find Nightingale, who’d been holed up in the library reading a book about aquatic spells in a language I didn’t even recognise, and off we went. 

Had she been available to me, I’d have taken Lesley. But that option had tasered me in the neck and run away, so now it was me and Nightingale against the world, and he’d been so keen on accompanying me everywhere lately I might just as well indulge him a little. I find that talking to a civilian works better when there’s two officers doing it, especially if one of the two might not receive the same kind of polite response as the posh white guy he brought with him.

Booker turned out to be a chubby ginger in his early forties, who earned a healthy living writing instruction manuals. He’d never managed to do anything else with his degree in journalism, he’d explained to me, and he’d always had a thing for engineering anyway. 

As we introduced ourselves to him, standing at his front door, he first glanced past us with apt appreciation at the Jag, then gave the two of us a surprised once-over. "Well, you're an odd couple, aren't you?" he remarked.

Nightingale and I looked at each other awkwardly, and Booker stepped aside to let us in.

We sat squished together on his tiny blue sofa, and declined his offer of tea. His house was full of cats. Nightingale eyed them anxiously, the way a man would when at least five of them were clearly plotting to leave large amounts of fur on his bespoke suit, but all I could wonder about was how alarmingly lonely Booker must be to collect this many of them.

At least he didn’t have cat pictures on the walls, or those collectable ceramic plates, but he certainly wasn’t far off. 

“So why are you here to ask me about something I reported way back then?” he asked us, right off the bat.

“We’re looking into a death that happened in the same year. Some new evidence has been brought to light which indicates it might not have been accidental, and your report might tie into our investigation.” I didn’t mention the recent deaths. I could only hope he hadn’t read about them in the paper, because that would be far too much for me to lie my way around. 

We made him tell the whole story again. He’d been walking on the Heath around dusk. He’d been seeing a girl, she’d dumped him, and he was just out getting some fresh air and trying to walk off his heartbreak. He’d passed the pond, which had looked perfectly still and empty, until someone suddenly burst out of it and lunged for his legs.

“He grabbed hold of both my ankles and pulled,” he said. “I toppled right over, hit the grass, and he started dragging me into the water. He was so fast, it was like he had a motor attached to his backside, you know? But I had my umbrella with me - it’d been a bit muggy, see - so I started banging away at his head and he let me go and disappeared under the water. I climbed out of the pond and made a run for it.” 

He mimed the banging bit emphatically, while I scribbled some notes in my notebook and stopped myself from doodling a little cartoon of the whole thing.

“You describe your assailant as a ‘he’,” Nightingale said. “Are you sure about this?” 

Booker shrugged. “I didn’t get a chance to peek at his privates, but look, I’m no little guy. I doubt a woman would be able to tackle me and drag me around like that.”

I thought of the woman currently gliding creepily through the Folly, and how she could fling him about as if he was a rag doll. 

"And you're positive your assailant was... human?" I asked carefully.

"What else would it be?" he said, giving me exactly the kind of look you'd give someone asking you if your assailant was human. "A mermaid, or something?"

"Just covering all the bases," I quipped, forcing a smile I hoped didn't make me look like a lunatic who was seriously considering mermaids for the suspect.

"Right," Booker said slowly, glancing carefully at Nightingale, then back to me. "Well, I suppose he looked... unwell. Thin? But really strong as a fucking ox though. Uh, excuse my French."

We excused him his French, and asked him if he remembered any more details about the suspect. He smiled sheepishly and reminded us this had been during his college days, and considering the amount of time he spent off his head in the pub it was a miracle he remembered anything at all.

“Long hair, though,” he did remember. “Really wild-looking, too. And I think he’d been hiding in the water for a while, because he looked odd. Greenish. I always figured that he’d disguised himself with pond plants, like seaweed or the like.” 

I didn’t bother telling him seaweed didn’t grow in fresh water, and penned all those details down furiously.

“One more question, Mr. Booker,” I said, absentmindedly reaching down to pet a grey tabby that was weaving around my legs. “Before you were attacked, when the pond was still, did you hear anything?”

“What do you mean?” 

“Like music,” I said, “Or just singing, of any kind.”

I felt Nightingale shift beside me, but Booker’s face flushed and I knew I’d asked the right question.  
“I wouldn’t say music,” he said hesitantly. “But I suppose… well. Singing isn’t the word I’d choose either. But I did hear... there was something. Like something far away, a soft voice, like a child humming a nursery rhyme. It wasn’t unpleasant.”

“Why didn’t you mention this when you reported the incident?” Nightingale asked sharply, and Booker shrugged.

“I figured they’d think I was crazy. It was hardly there, anyway. I stopped to listen for it, that’s when the bastard jumped up from the water.”

Whatever it was, it had lured him in with song. It had *genuinely* done that. I felt giddy like a toddler in a ball pit, and bounced up from the sofa. “Thank you, Mr. Booker, that will be all.” 

Nightingale gave him his card, so he might contact us if he remembered anything else of note, and I just stood there wishing I had cards to hand out. 

As we walked back to the Jag, I listed to Nightingale what we had so far. He was putting things together, I could tell, and I was rather desperate for whatever conclusion he was going to come up with.

“It’s greenish-looking, thin but strong, has a lot of wild hair, lures people to the water’s edge with song and then drags them in. It’s enough at home in the water to avoid being seen there ‘til it chooses to show itself, and keeps its victims under the surface…” I was so sure about the mermaids. I just couldn’t think of anything else it might be, not with that description, but just a few feet away from the Jag Nightingale stopped dead in his tracks.

“My God,” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t put this together before. It’s so obvious.”

“What?” I said.

He turned to me, a look of utter shock on his face. “It’s a nix.”

I paused, gaping at him. “It’s a _what_?”


	6. Chapter 6

A nix, as Nightingale laid it out for me, was a water spirit that popped up in some form or other in folklore throughout most of Europe. The nix, or nixie, were a kind of water hag which enjoyed luring people into the water and drowning them. They were shape-shifters, although their true forms were greenish, spindly-looking creatures with gills and long, weed-like hair that grew on their heads and down their backs.

"How come I've never heard of these?" I asked.

"They're known by many different names," he explained. "Nix is the German term. In England they're known as knuckers, or more commonly by regional terms such as Shellycoat, or Jenny Greenteeth."

"Jenny Greenteeth!" I said. "I've heard of that one! She's this fairytale creature who would lure children into the water." I didn’t tell him that I read about her in a _Discworld_ novel. I doubted he would approve.

"Not just children," Nightingale said, "though the tale was a popular means of scaring children into staying away from bodies of water. No, as far as I know, they're fairly indiscriminate when it comes to their choice of victim, though I have to admit my knowledge on them is limited."

"How come?"

"Because they're even rarer than kelpies. There have been only a few incidents reported in the past couple of centuries, which were barely proven to be connected to them in the first place. At least, not in England. They're far more common in Germany and Scandinavia." He sighed, and gestured helplessly. "To be honest, I too only really know them from stories I heard as a boy. I've never encountered them in the field."

As such, he honestly didn’t know why they would keep their victim under water for two weeks, or even if they would work in cycles of fifteen years. He was determined to find out, though, and wound up carrying out of the library a pile of books that were so old most of the bindings were falling off. 

I was itching for a more practical approach, maybe or maybe not involving an iron frying pan. After a little under an hour spent once again with my Latin dictionary trying to make sense of it all and wondering why the hell these authors insisted on so thoroughly detailing all the water fauna typically found in a nix habitat, I did my best to talk Nightingale into going back out onto the Heath.

“We know what we’re looking for now,” I said. “Maybe we can get it to talk to us?”

“I don’t know how open it will be to a friendly chat, Peter,” he replied. “And what would you ask it? Would you remind it that drowning people is against the law? This isn’t the kind of creature with which you can reason.” 

“I could at least try and find out why it appears to be stockpiling people in its underwater lair,” I said defiantly. “These books certainly aren’t explaining that.”

“Again, how? Politely ask it to explain itself?” he said. He was getting impatient with me, I could tell, but that was just as well ‘cause I was getting a bit impatient with him, too.

“Why not?” 

He looked at me in perfect exasperation, which I shrugged off with practised ease. 

“So far most incidents have been at dusk. If we go there at the same time, won’t that give us a good chance of catching at least a glimpse?” I asked. 

“It’s not restricted to one pond,” Nightingale reminded me. “There have been incidents at all three. Odds are we’ll be staring into the wrong one at the wrong time.”

“Then I’ll take those odds. Every night that we sit here digging through these old books is another night it can drag someone into the water. I can’t sit here and let that happen, I just can’t.” I shut the book as decisively as you can shut a doubtlessly priceless antique. He closed his eyes, resigned himself to my whims, and sighed.

“I know you’re right,” he said then, and I wondered if some portion of hell had just gotten a bit chillier than usual. “I just dislike the notion of going out looking for this creature when we know so little about it.”

I wasn’t quite prepared for that, but I know to take my wins where I can.

“Don’t worry, sir,” I told him. “We’ll be fine. We’re wizards, after all.”

He gave me a small smile for that. 

The Heath was much the same as it had been the entire week. A bit damp, a bit eerie, decidedly more foreign now that I knew there was a genuine water hag right out of some Grimm’s fairytale living in the ponds. 

We’d dithered by the entrance for a while, deciding on which pond to check first. In the end we didn’t quite flip a coin, but our decision to go look at the Highgate Men’s Pond wasn’t much less arbitrary than that. 

We walked around it, scanning the water’s edge for anything suspicious, but other than two blokes in a particular state of undress we found nothing. Nightingale ordered the two of them to go home, and the taller of the two, a skinny bloke with a delightful head of dark curly hair, gave him lip for it.

“You walk about the Heath with a boy half your age on your arm, and have the gall to make us leave?” he spat. “What, you need the entire area to show him a good time, do you?”

I could see Nightingale gearing up to give him a polite yet undoubtedly fiercely sarcastic piece of his mind, but couldn’t see this going anywhere that would help us find a nix. I tugged his elbow, just as big-mouth-bloke’s boyfriend did the same to him. 

“Never mind, fellas,” I said. “Go about your business. Just stay away from the water, would you, and stick together. A guy was drowned here just last week.” I smiled coldly, watched their horrified faces turn towards the water, and took Nightingale with me down the path.

“Unbelievable,” Nightingale said under his breath as we walked away.

“Let it be, sir,” I said. “Considering the area, it’s a miracle we’ve only found two of them.” Had this been a warm summer’s night, we’d probably have been up to our ears in people dogging. I’d have liked to see Nightingale’s face at that, though. 

By the time we got round to taking a look at the Mixed Pond, it was already dark out. Nightingale had conjured a modest werelight to make sure we didn’t trip over anything in the dark, but I was getting the distinct feeling this expedition was going to be a bust. Shame, because that probably meant I wouldn’t be able to persuade him to come back the next day. 

“Just the Ladies’ Pond left,” I said. 

He sighed. “I doubt we’ll find anything, Peter. I suggest we head back to the Folly, instead.”

“Just a quick look? To satisfy my curiosity.”

Nightingale felt in no way obliged to cater to the whims of my curiosity, and refused to go. I wasn’t going to leave the place until I’d seen all three ponds, and suggested he wait by the Jag while I went for a quick look. I assumed that he simply rather wanted to avoid Beatrice that night, which I understood just fine. Soggy ghost sisters are a bit much to deal with two nights in a row, and all that.

“Because standing by the water by yourself, in the dark, is such an intelligent idea,” he said.

“It’s past dusk already. If it was going to strike it would have by now.”

“It might be waiting for the perfect opportunity. Don’t you watch horror films, Peter? These are the sorts of decisions that get plucky heroines killed.”

“Good thing I’m not a plucky heroine,” I said with a grin. He thought that was funny, I could tell he did, because the corners of his mouth twitched in the glow of his werelight. “Just a quick look, sir. If the nix jumps up, I promise I’ll put a fireball in its face. I’ve been practising.”

He didn’t even bother to hide how very much he was rolling his eyes at me. “Five minutes,” he said. “If I reach the car and don’t see you walking towards me, so help me you will be up to your ears in Latin homework for a week.”

I was still laughing to myself as I jogged up to the pond, because I was already up to my ears in Latin homework anyway. Five minutes would do for now, to gratify that curiosity of mine. I glanced over my shoulder, watched him retreat down the hill, werelight and all, and conjured a little one of my own to guide me to the water.

It was just as quiet as the other two ponds. I kept my werelight small, just a tiny marble floating over my hand, so my eyes wouldn’t adjust to the light too much, but there was nothing to be seen. I sighed.

“If you’re there,” I said out loud, “I just want to have a chat. Never met a nix before, you know?” 

No response, of course. Even Beatrice wasn’t showing herself. I stood there for a bit longer, counting the seconds that ticked away, and once I figured Nightingale would begin to worry about me I decided I’d had my fill and turned back around.

That was when I heard the singing. It was accompanied by a definite whiff of _vestigia_ drifting at me leisurely from somewhere across the water, that same fish-tank smell and putrid taste in the back of my throat I’d encountered when I’d investigated Sarah Morris’ body.

It should’ve been a warning sign for me to get the hell away from the water and call Nightingale, but I’m not known for my bright decisions in the face of danger, okay? So because I am an idiot and an optimist, I did the exact opposite and stepped closer to the water’s edge, extinguishing my werelight as I did.

“London police!” I called out. “I know you’re out there! I honestly just want to talk to you, please show yourself!” I was tempted to take out my warrant card, but didn’t know for sure whether that would mean anything to a nix. There was no reaction, anyway. The water was still and pitch black, like a flat expanse of obsidian at my feet. 

The pond remained quiet all around, not even a rustling of leaves or distant quacking of ducks. All I heard was the singing, which matched pretty much exactly the description Booker had given us. Like a child’s voice, a little girl most likely, humming hauntingly. I stood still, trying to make out what it was, and that, as it turned out, was exactly what it had been waiting for me to do.

Something burst forth from the pond. The water rippled and spun so wildly I could hardly make anything out, but I saw very clearly two distinct pairs of long, mud-green arms reach for my legs. They grabbed me before I even had the opportunity to think about jumping back, and I lost my balance and fell back hard onto the grass. The impact pushed all the air from my lungs, which was regrettable as the next thing I knew I was pulled under water with startling speed.

I didn't even have time to scream, which, considering that Nightingale was around somewhere, was really rather unfortunate.

There were *two* of them. I was so stunned I forgot to fight back for the first few seconds, and by the time my instincts kicked in they had already dragged me down deep, to where the water was dark and bitingly cold. I began struggling but their grip on my legs was strong, sharp claws almost ripping right through my jeans and into my legs.

I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out, and the only result was a large gout of murky pond water forcing itself down my throat. I could feel it pushing into my lungs, filling them up, expanding them. I realised what was happening - they were preparing to keep me there, deep down in the dark, like they'd kept Sarah Morris and Chantou Ray. 

I'm not proud of it, but I panicked instantly. On the up side, I learned I am actually capable of shooting fireballs underwater, but they were weak and I aimed them basically everywhere. Still, the nixies didn't seem to have counted on their victim being a wizard - even if he was a barely-capable one - and one of them let go of me with a high-pitched screech that resounded all through the pond.

The other one held on tight, and I kicked at it with my free leg. I tried screaming again, and felt my body fight to push the water back out of my lungs. I became instantly aware of my need for air, my heart pounding in my ears, and I struggled wildly. 

The nix didn’t let me go, still dragging me ever downwards, and there was a pressure in my lungs and in my head I was sure would kill me. The water became darker, and I didn’t know if that was because I was getting deeper, or because I was beginning to lose consciousness. I was losing my strength too, no longer finding it in me to keep fighting, and I had one perfect, clear thought.

I was going to die.

That was when I saw Beatrice.

She was hovering underwater, a few feet in front of me. It made no difference for a ghost, above water or under, and she looked just the same as she did standing on the shore. She was regarding me with an odd, mystified interest. Desperately, I stretched out a hand to her, and pleaded in silence.

_Help me._

Then everything became very bright.

***

I shut my eyes tightly against whatever brightness was coming over me, and wondered briefly if this was that light you were supposed to see at the end of the tunnel. Then I opened my eyes, and found myself no longer underwater, nor, for that matter, in any kind of tunnel.

I was standing in what appeared to be the back garden of a posh London home. From the looks of it I’d say built in the early 19th century, very much in Regency style with white painted stucco and bow windows, the kind of house you’d easily have to fork out 11 million quid for nowadays. I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what it was worth as I was standing there, however, because I certainly wasn’t in the present any more. 

I can’t say what told me I wasn’t. Maybe it was the lack of London’s usual background traffic noise, or the dearth of aeroplanes in the sky. Mostly I just knew, in my bones and in my heart, that I was somehow standing on a warm summer afternoon in 1909 - which meant I was hallucinating. 

Not the first time that had happened. I’d had a fairly involved hallucination involving the river Tyburn when I’d been trapped under Oxford Circus, after all, and here I was, currently being drowned by a nix and doing it again. I wondered if this happened to everyone when they were in mortal peril, but I think I’d have known if that had been the case. I’m a copper, I’ve spent lots of time around people in mortal peril.

As I stood there, marvelling at being able to draw in lungfuls of hallucinated air, a young boy sauntered into the garden. The gravel crunched under his impeccably-shined shoes, and he wore a black suit that appeared made for him. His brown hair was worn in a perfect side parting, and he looked dead serious, walking there in the bright sunlight.

I’d like to say I recognised him somehow: by the way he carried himself even at this age, or from the look in his grey eyes, but I’d be lying. Again, I just knew, in my bones and in my heart, that I was looking at a nine-year-old Thomas Nightingale.

He wandered down the path, and crouched down by some flowers which had been planted along the borders. He trailed his fingers carefully along the pale lilac leaves, lost in thought. He’d probably be able to tell me what sort of flower it was. I wondered if Nightingale’s thing for plants had been there since he was a kid, and wondered why I’d never asked him that before. 

I realised I tended to regard Nightingale almost as an institution, someone who just sprang fully-formed into my life one day. On some level you know that people you meet were little once, that they cultivated themselves over time, but for some reason it doesn’t really hit you until you’re confronted with their childhood selves in a hallucination cooked up by your dying brain.

I didn’t know if he could see me. I saw nothing against testing it.

“Hello Thomas,” I said. 

He looked up at me, and frowned. Yeah, he could see me. He straightened, still frowning, giving me the thorough once-over any child would give a random bloke who just went and popped up in his back yard.

“Hello,” he then said, hesitantly. “I don’t believe I’ve met you before.”

“You haven’t,” I said. “I’m Peter.”

“You’re dressed funny. Are you here for the wake?”

“The wake?”

He nodded. “My sister Beatrice died. She drowned.”

Of course. The wake. Beatrice. That explained the spotless black suit he was wearing, anyway, because I doubted that even early-20th-century posh parents would let their kids play outside dressed like that under normal circumstances.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. He looked up at me sharply, and shrugged. The gesture was so defeated, it was downright shocking on someone so young.

“Mama says she’s with God now, in heaven. It’s nonsense, of course. She just said that to try and make us feel better.” He turned back to his flowers, as if to hide the great bitterness that moved across his face from me. “There is no such thing as heaven, or God.”

Well, that was brutal coming from a nine-year-old. I didn’t even have a comeback to it. He looked back at me, and cocked his head.

“Why are you all wet?” he asked. 

Confused, I looked down at myself, and to my own shock realised I was genuinely dripping. I took a step forward, and my feet squelched in my sopping-wet boots. “I think I’m drowning,” I said, losing grip of the situation. 

Thomas said nothing, just stood there regarding me calmly, and I was once again reminded of this not being real. A real nine-year-old boy, see, would have run screaming upon finding a sodden bloke in his garden telling him he was drowning, even if that nine-year-old boy was destined to become a great wizard someday. 

“Will you remember this, when you’re grown up?” I asked him regardless.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Will you?” The question was posed with such irony that all I saw in that moment was Nightingale, *my* Nightingale, the one I felt absolutely not awkward about referring to as mine at all. 

The sound of little feet walking on gravel came to me again, and a second boy walked into the garden. Just a toddler, this one, looking misplaced and uncomfortable in his black suit. He was holding a little toy horse to his chest protectively. He couldn’t have been more than three years old, and resembled his brother only superficially – grey eyes, brown hair, but where Nightingale’s face was long and finely-boned, this one was made overall of much rounder, stockier stuff. 

“Simon,” Thomas said, “this is Peter. I don’t think he’s supposed to be here.”

The toddler, Simon, walked up to him, and Thomas picked him up easily. He was almost too big for it, but Thomas held him anyway, his little shoes leaving streaks of dust on Thomas’ suit.

“He’s only three,” Thomas explained to me patiently. “He doesn’t understand what happened to Beatrice.”

Simon looked at me, and it hurt me to conclude that somewhere between 1909 and 2014, this boy had died what I somehow expected to have been a messy death. It was like he carried that fate all around him; like, again I somehow just knew.

I understood, then. I understood I was looking at a Thomas Nightingale who had just suffered his first loss, of what would be a horrifying many. Beatrice had done this, Beatrice took me here somehow, to help me understand something, even if I had no idea why she felt it right to do that for me at that precise moment.

I felt a cough bubble up from my throat, and it burst from my mouth with a flood of pond water that dribbled down my chin. Thomas did look at me with some alarm at that, at least.

“I’m dying. I think I’m dying,” I said. Thomas nodded, which was frankly rather terrifying in that _Children of the Corn_ sort of way.

I reached out, and, very lightly, touched his hair. I don’t know why I did that. He didn’t even react to it, as I ran my wet fingers across his hair with a kind of tenderness you wouldn’t expect to find in someone who was actively drowning in some reality other than this.

“I’m sorry, Thomas,” I said. “I’m sorry you lost your sister. I’m sorry you lost one of your apprentices. I’m sorry you’re losing me, too. I’m sorry you lost so much in your life.”

He nodded gravely. I stepped back, looking into those clever grey eyes of his, coughed up more water, and then I was falling back, back into the dark.

***

When I came to I was lying on my back, on the grass, and found myself looking up into those same clever grey eyes. Over a hundred years older and deeply worried, Nightingale hovered over me, dripping wet, one hand on the side of my face.

“Thomas,” I gasped, grabbing his hand to make sure he kept it where it was. If he was surprised by hearing me call him by his first name, he certainly didn’t show it. He rolled me onto my side, and I lay there coughing up pond water while he caressed my hair and the side of my face, as if making sure for himself I was still there and I was still alive.


	7. Chapter 7

Despite his protests that I really should go see a doctor, I made Nightingale drive me home to the Folly. I kept repeating to him that were two of them, two nixies, to such an annoying extent it’s a miracle he didn’t pull over halfway there and kick me out of the car.

“Are you really sure there were two?” he asked me. “I only saw one, trying to drag you down.”

“I scared the other one off with a poorly-aimed fireball,” I said, though it came out a lot less coherently than that. My teeth wouldn’t stop chattering, and getting sentences properly formed seemed a bit of a challenge. 

Because I am one lucky bastard, Nightingale had turned and followed me to the pond mere moments after I’d walked up to it, deciding (rightfully so, I’ll admit) that he didn’t quite trust my decision-making skills. He hadn’t actually seen me getting dragged in, but had arrived at a pond where I was worryingly not standing and had seen enough movement just underwater to draw his conclusions. 

Without doing much thinking at all he’d jumped in after me, had seen me being dragged limply towards the bottom by a persistent nix and had, for lack of a better description, rescued me as though I were a helpless maiden. 

I didn’t ask him how he’d got the nix off me. I didn’t think I really wanted to know what magic he’d been flinging right past my ears at the thing.

I did ask him if he performed CPR on me. “No need,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “As soon as I hauled you above the surface you started coughing.” That was reassuring for a reason that blindsided me a little. The first thought I had about that was, you see, that I was glad, because if he was going to put his mouth anywhere on me I damn sure would have liked to be conscious for it.

Nightingale steered me neatly into the Folly and towards the reading room. “Molly!” he shouted. “We need a blanket, and some hot tea!” He gestured towards the fireplace and it genuinely roared to life, a fire blazing up so high it threatened to burst right out of the hearth for a second. A little too much gusto in whatever spell he’d just used, then. Good to know even he had that problem at times. 

“Take off your wet clothes,” he ordered. “I’ll be right back.” 

I stood dumbly by the fireplace as he walked away, shivering wildly and wondering why he wanted me to get naked in the reading room. I supposed the gas fire in my bedroom would probably give off a lot less heat than this great big honking bonfire of his, though, and to be honest I was already starting to feel quite happy standing right there in its glow.

Molly glided into the room, looking even more sinister than usual, lit only by the flickering flames. She was carrying a thick, dark blue blanket, and gave me a stern once-over. Suitably intimidated I started stripping down, struggling with the wet laces on my Docs for far longer than I liked. My hands just wouldn’t do what I wanted them to, and even after I’d got my shoes off I nearly fell over twice trying to get out of my jeans.

Once I was standing, much embarrassed, in my boxers, she handed me the blanket, picked up my wet things and, remaining where she was, raised an eyebrow at me.

“Oh, all right,” I muttered, slipping out of my soggy boxers underneath the blanket and handing them to her. Satisfied, she turned and left the room, leaving me by myself. The blanket she’d handed me wasn’t just clean, it was positively *fresh*, like it had been washed today and dried out in the sunshine. I could only wonder if she kept items like these clean on purpose, washing them regularly, just in case I went and did something stupid like almost drown. 

I sighed, and simply sank down right onto the floor, in front of the fire. I snuggled deeply into the blanket and wondered if Molly would bring me some clean clothes. I was probably lucky she’d brought me a blanket, and that only happened because Nightingale had expressly ordered her to.

The shivering was never-ending, but I knew well enough that it was a good sign. My thoughts kept spinning in weird circles, starting over before I’d managed to finish them, and I was so exhausted I thought I might just curl up there by the fireplace and fall asleep, like a little puppy. 

I was just about to give that a go when Nightingale padded back into the reading room. He was wearing a charcoal cashmere bathrobe which had probably cost about as much as half my entire wardrobe. Add in the suede moccasin slippers on his feet, and it was the most comfortable outfit I’d ever seen him wear. I was stunned he even owned something like this, but then, what had I expected him to lounge about in within the privacy of his own room at night?

He hesitated at first, but then sank down to the floor in front of me, inching a bit closer to the fireplace. His hair was still wet, but combed back neatly into its usual side parting, and his face was a bit ruddy where he’d towelled it dry a little too enthusiastically. He, too, shivered but, having spent decidedly less time in the cold water than I had, seemed a lot less affected by it.

“How do you feel?” he asked me.

“Cold,” I said. “Tired. And a little ashamed. I’m very naked underneath my blanket.” He laughed at that. “Molly took my pants,” I continued, finding it within my rights to whinge just a little bit. I’d almost drowned, after all.

“Mine too,” he confessed with a grin. “I think she plans to wash everything at once. She did bring me clean ones, although I try not to think too much about her going through my underwear drawer.”

I grinned, shivered, and ducked deeper into my blanket. 

“Are you absolutely sure you saw two nixies?” Nightingale asked me again. He was sitting close to me, so close our knees almost touched. If I’d wanted to, I could have curled right onto his lap, and I cannot tell you how great an idea that seemed to me at the time. 

“Yes,” I said. “They grabbed me at the same time, and held on to a leg each.” I paused to allow a particularly violent shiver. “It explains the higher number of victims. There’s two of them. Perhaps they’re competing. Trying to outdo one another.” 

“Or claiming territory by claiming more victims... this is unheard of. Fascinating, really.”

“Oh yeah, really fascinating, especially when they try to add you to their underwater collection.” I stared into the fireplace, wondering if my heart beating as fast as it was counted as a symptom of hypothermia, or a symptom of something else entirely. 

Molly came in with the tea. She looked utterly annoyed with us for being on the floor, shooting me the kind of look that told me she blamed me entirely, and set the tray down neatly beside us.

“Thank you, Molly,” Nightingale said, and she nodded and disappeared again. He poured us both a cup, and I cradled it thankfully. 

“I saw Beatrice when I was down there,” I said softly, looking down into my tea. “I think she gave me a sort of vision.”

“Oh?” he said.

“Vision. Hallucination. Something. I was somewhere else, let’s put it like that.” I sipped my tea, damn near burned my tongue, and took a moment as I felt the warmth of it pool through me the way only a really good cup of tea can manage.

“What did you see?” he asked me.

“You.” He gave me an odd look for that. “You as a child, more specifically. On the day of your sister’s wake. I spoke with you, and everything.”

“Beatrice couldn’t have shown you that,” he said, as patiently as he was talking to Beatrice herself. “She couldn’t have shown you something that happened after she died, how would she have known?”

“Maybe it’s not that simple. She said so herself, sometimes things happen to her now, sometimes they haven't happened yet at all. Maybe the dead are aware of more things than we know.”

He didn’t respond right away, sipping his tea and letting the thought sink in. “I doubt she’d be able to give you a vision, though. I’ve never heard of a ghost with the ability to do that. It’s more likely that you hallucinated it on your own.”

“I saw things I couldn’t have known about.”

“You knew I lost my sister when I was nine, it’s not a big leap for your mind to cook up an image of me as a child at that time.”

“I saw Simon.”

That stopped him dead in his tracks. He looked at me, mouth slightly ajar. 

“He was your little brother, right? You’ve never once mentioned him to me, I couldn’t possibly have known about him. He had this little wooden horsey. Tell me I made that up.”

He didn’t tell me, so I knew I hadn’t. 

“Still, this says more about you than it does about Beatrice,” Nightingale said uneasily. “Has this happened before?”

“Yes, “ I confessed. “When one of the Quiet People trapped me under a nice thick layer of concrete. I kind of hallucinated myself back a couple centuries and met the previous Tyburn.” I’d have shrugged, but I was still shivering, and holding onto a cup of hot tea was tricky enough as it was.

“Remarkable,” Nightingale said. “That almost suggests a kind of latent psychic ability.”

“That only pops up when I’m on the verge of dying a violent death. Nice. Very useful.”

“There are certain tests we can do, to see if we can pinpoint how it works. If you wanted to, of course.”

This time I did shrug. I didn’t know if I wanted to. Life was complicated enough as it was. For now, I just wanted to drink my tea, and warm up, and maybe sleep for a week or two. To begin with, I finished my tea and set down my cup before I wound up dropping it from my trembling hands.

“It was odd, seeing you as a child,” I said, musingly, staring into the fire again. “I knew it was you right off the bat. You were so solemn for such a nipper. Then again, you had just lost your sister.” I sighed, and turned back to him. “Were you close to her?”

“Not particularly.” He set his own empty teacup down, and sighed. “Having a sister seven years older than you is not unlike having two mothers. She was always bossing me around. Thomas, stand up straight, Thomas, wash your hands, Thomas do this, Thomas do that... to be honest, I rather resented her for it. I loved her, of course I did, she was my sister, but, you know... I actively disliked her quite a lot of the time.”

I didn’t want to remind him that, as an only child, I actually really didn’t know. Still, I had lots of older cousins who treated me much the same, so I could sympathise to some degree.

“Tell me about your family?” I asked. He looked surprised at the question. “And don’t give me that rubbish again about how I can’t possibly be interested. Of course I am. You can’t just casually mention one day that you had six siblings and then never follow it up,” I added sternly. 

“All right, but I’m only humouring you because you’re still hovering near hypothermia and I want to keep you awake,” he said. I could live with that.

“You know about Beatrice, she was the oldest,” he began. “After her there was my oldest brother, David. He took over our father’s estate, after he passed away. David was only twenty-one years old at the time, but he carried the responsibility well. He died in December 1940.”

“That date sounds important. Can I claim hypothermia as the reason that I can’t quite pinpoint why?” I said.

He gave me a sad smile. “That was when the London Blitz took place. David, and his family, were amongst the many casualties.” 

I winced sympathetically. He drew in a deep breath.

“After David, there was Michael. He passed away in 1936. Viral meningitis. To be honest, I’ve always suspected it to have been syphilitic in nature... Michael kept a particular kind of lifestyle. After Michael, there was Nathan. He died in 1957, stomach cancer. Horrible way to go. After Nathan my parents had me, and then my younger sister, Augustine. She was the only one out of all of us allowed to die of old age. She passed away in 1986.”

I nodded, hoping I was managing to file all of this away securely. “And Simon?” I asked.

“Simon was the youngest. He died on a beach in Normandy, on the sixth of June 1944.”

“D-Day,” I said.

“Yes.” Another one of those sad smiles. “He was my favourite. I know it’s probably horrible of me, to have had a favourite, but he was my baby brother and I loved him very much. He was only 38 years old when he died.” 

I said nothing, and pretended I hadn’t seen the gloss of tears in his eyes. I didn’t feel sorry for making him talk about this, even if perhaps I should have. We both stared into the fire, which crackled pleasantly. The Folly was silent all around us otherwise, and it felt intensely safe for some reason, sitting there in the dark together. 

I don’t quite know when I had leaned forward, but I found myself with my forehead resting on Nightingale’s shoulder. I might have been there all that time he had been talking, or I could have been sitting there like that in silence with him for an hour, I honestly couldn’t tell you. It was like my body had more or less betrayed me, seeking out more warmth and comfort without bothering to inform my brain of the fact.

The really shocking thing there was, though, that Nightingale apparently didn’t mind in the slightest. He allowed me to rest right there, placing a comforting hand on the back of my neck, and once my initial shock wore off I had to admit it really explained why I’d been feeling so bloody safe.

“I’m so sorry, sir,” I said softly. “That you had to lose so many people in your life. I wish you hadn’t had to.” 

It just all added up, didn’t it? Six siblings. His parents. All the friends and loved ones he lost at Ettersberg. Lord knew who else. The man was a walking graveyard, and I felt a right prick for never understanding that about him before. 

The problem with not dying, you see, is that everyone around you wasn’t usually quite so lucky. 

“Things are the way they are,” he said. “Death is a part of life. It hurts, but only because it’s supposed to.”

“That’s a little too easy,” I muttered. “That doesn’t make it okay. All those people you’ve buried. You were alone for so long. And then you have two apprentices, which must’ve been great for you, and then one of them...” I winced into his shoulder. “Lesley. She abandoned you, too. I’m so sorry. I never said that to you. She hurt me, but she hurt you too, and I’m sorry.”

He said nothing for a long moment. I could feel him breathing, evenly, in and out, and waited for him to speak.

“We did lose her, but I am not alone. I have you.”

His words felt heavy as they descended on me, but not the kind of heavy that was unwelcome. “Yes, and then I go and almost get myself drowned. Fat lot of help I am,” I said. 

“You are, actually,” he said, and it sounded like a confession. “Although I would prefer if you didn’t go and do that again. The drowning, I mean. I’d hate to ruin another suit having to dive in after you.”

I grinned against his shoulder, and we sat there for a while longer in silence. I didn’t remember being so boneless in my life, slumped against him as I was, and I was dead comfortable. He was giving off a remarkable amount of body heat, too. I was reminded of when I visited him in the hospital, after he’d been shot. I’d taken hold of his hand, and had marvelled then, too, at how warm he was.

Maybe that was just a Nightingale thing. Maybe he just ran hot, compared to others. I liked the idea of that.

“You’re like the warmest thing in the world,” I mumbled. “Which is silly, considering the fire roaring delightfully to my left.” He laughed quietly, and I felt it more than I could hear it. 

He was really, really close to me. His thumb caressed my nape, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel lovely. I turned my head a little, encountered the side of his jaw with my nose and lips, and the burst of butterflies in my stomach took my breath away.

So I kissed him. I’d just like to gently remind you that poor decision-making is a symptom of hypothermia, even if it excuses or explains very little.

The kiss was uncomplicated, all things considered. His mouth was right there, and so was mine, and fitting them together felt so natural and was so obvious a thing to do it wasn’t even surprising or scary or any of the things a first kiss can be. It just was. It was a small sort of kiss, dry, just his lips and mine catching and feeling each other, and it was perfect in its simplicity. 

I broke the kiss but remained there, close, the tip of my nose brushing along his cheekbone. I revelled in his presence, the smell and feel of him, and when I carefully opened my eyes I saw him looking back at me with dark, half-lidded eyes.

“This is a very bad idea,” he said softly, and I smiled a small half-smile at him.

“You know me,” I said. “I’m all about bad ideas.” 

He chuckled quietly, and that was lovely too, so I kissed him again for it. I even gave him a modest bit of tongue this time, and he responded enthusiastically. We spent quite some time sitting there, on the floor, by the fireplace, making out languidly like we didn’t have a care in the world. 

I think it will surprise no one if I mention now that he was an absolutely amazing kisser. That’s what a century of practice will do for you, I imagine, and I was bloody grateful for it as I was sitting there thoroughly wallowing in all of it. 

Nightingale was all hands, even if he kept them neatly above the blanket. I wouldn't have objected to him rummaging about a bit underneath, is all I'm saying, but I didn't quite dare to steer him into that direction either. He caressed my hair, my face, my neck, the bits of my shoulders that became exposed as I moved myself closer to him. It felt like he was being incredibly thorough within the limits he'd set himself, like he'd been wanting to reach out and touch me for a long time and now that I'd allowed him to, he couldn't quite make himself stop.

I found myself thinking that I'd been wanting him to touch me for such a long time too, which was actually a bit of a startling conclusion to draw, because I hadn't been aware of that at all. It was almost like I'd managed to completely ignore that desire growing inside of me, up until the point I got to slake that particular thirst and then all I felt was a big fat 'oh, finally'.

I broke the kiss, and wrapped both my arms around his shoulders. He melted into me, and I wondered absently how long it’d been since someone hugged him. Then I got to thinking how long it’d been since someone hugged me, *really* hugged me, and I wound up feeling a bit sorry for both us poor sods. 

"Phenomenally bad idea," Nightingale whispered miserably, running his thumb around the shell of my ear. I shivered again, but not because of the cold this time.

“Let’s not be complete pessimists about this,” I murmured, pressing my face into his neck. He smelled of expensive cologne and pond water. 

I felt his hesitation. I pulled back and pinned him down with a look I hoped wasn’t too exasperated. “I’m exhausted,” I said, “and I think I’ve warmed up well enough. I’m going to bed. I’m leaving my bedroom door open. If you want to, there’s a place for you there. If you don’t want to... well, I’d be terribly disappointed, but it’ll be okay nonetheless.”

I had honestly very few dishonourable intentions. I was tired, my throat was sore from coughing up pond water, and I just wanted to sleep. I just really didn’t want to sleep alone.

He nodded as I struggled to my feet, doing my very best not to let the blanket fall down. He looked devastatingly gorgeous, sitting there in the light of the fire, all angles and doubt, and it was sincerely difficult to drag myself away. I did so anyway, even if it was just to be dramatic, and left him by himself.

There was a clean set of pyjamas on my bed when I walked into my room, and the gas fire was burning gently. Molly had done that for me, obviously, and I marvelled at that for a moment. Gosh, Miss Molly, it’s as if you love me after all. I put the pyjamas on, laid the blanket over my bed for good measure, and crawled in. 

I had to fight to keep myself awake. I didn’t want to fall asleep, not yet, not when the jury was still out on whether or not Nightingale was going to take me up on my offer. I didn’t want to drop off into oblivion and wake up the next morning never knowing if he came by or not. I lay there fighting myself for longer than I liked, beginning to wonder how the hell I was going to face him over breakfast if he never showed.

It was something I had never needed to worry about. Perhaps twenty minutes after I’d got into bed, my bedroom door creaked slowly open, and in he came. I could feel his awkwardness radiating off him as he stepped into my room and carefully closed the door again. He hovered there, appearing unsure of pretty much everything in life, so I scooted to the side demonstratively to make room for him.

It was all he needed. He took off his bathrobe, and hung it neatly over my desk chair. My room was dark, lit only by my dear London outside the window, but in the shadows I could make out he was wearing nothing but a pair of boxer-briefs and a tight-fitting vest. He was all limbs, long, strong arms and legs, and I yearned to flick the lights on to get a better look. 

He crawled into my bed, bringing all his warmth with him, and I slid closer immediately. We didn’t speak. We fit ourselves together as perfectly as if we’d been sharing a bed for years, cuddled up close underneath my duvet, and he let out the most perfectly contented sigh I’d ever heard in my life. 

He’d brushed his teeth, I could smell the spearmint on his breath, so I took advantage of that by kissing him again. Just a little bit of scandalously open-mouthed kissing, his hands sliding across my shoulders and down my back. There was an invitation in that, too, written in the way he allowed me to press my knee gently between his thighs, and in the soft sound he made against the corner of my mouth.

But I was so tired. He was too, despite it all, and I settled in and found a perfect spot just beneath his jaw where I could stick my face. He started petting me again, my hair, my cheek, and I fell asleep just like that, curled around the man who’d changed my life.


	8. Chapter 8

For some reason I’d half expected him to be gone in the morning. Would have been nice and dramatic anyway, me waking up to find his half of the bed cold, wondering if it had all been a dream. But real life is hardly ever that contrived, so I woke up to find him still asleep beside me, drooling peacefully onto his pillow.

We’d wandered into our respective nooks in our sleep, and he lay on his stomach, one hand up over his head, the other curled in a loose fist by his face. He was breathing deeply, and in sleep he looked as unguarded as I’d ever seen him.

In hindsight this was probably when I first realised I was well and truly off my tits in love with the man, but you know. I’ve little use for dwelling on flowery epiphanies. 

The edges of an old scar peeked out from behind the white cotton of his vest, just off his shoulder. _So that's what a seventy-year-old bullet wound looks like_ , I thought to myself. I inched closer to him and touched it, very lightly, tracing the tips of my fingers along the raised skin. I pushed his vest aside to get to see it just a little better, and when I was so close I figured I might as well get a little lovey-dovey and started scattering little kisses up his shoulder. 

He woke up slowly, a smile on his lips before he'd even opened his eyes. I felt pretty good about that, about getting to wake him up happy. Something told me most of his mornings didn't start quite so pleasantly. 

"Morning," I said softly. "You're a delight to wake up next to, did you know?"

He let out a laugh that was barely more than a husky exhalation, rolled onto his side and burrowed into me, tucking his head under my chin. That, too, was a delight, having him so sleep-warm and soft around the edges in my arms.

"How do you feel?" he rumbled, tracing circles on my back with his fingers.

"Pretty good," I said. "My throat's sore, still, but other than that... I think I can safely conclude I'm pretty happy at the moment."

He hummed softly, tugging on my shirt a bit, and moved up to kiss me. I was very aware that this was the first time he'd kissed me - the other kisses we'd shared had been initiated by me, no matter how eagerly he'd responded. It felt important, somehow.

He pulled back, his fingers on the side of my face again. I wasn't so sure what his thing was, there - he had kept on pawing at me pretty much since he'd hauled me out of the pond, like he was half afraid I wasn't really there and he had to touch me to make sure. 

"This is really inappropriate," he said with a resigned little sigh, if not with any particular kind of disapproval. 

"Why?" I asked, even if I knew why. I suppose I just kind of wanted to hear him say it.

He rolled away from me, onto his back, with an annoyed little huff. "Would you like a list?" he said. "For starters, I'm your superior officer. On top of that, I'm your master. And to add further insult to injury, I'm a staggering ninety years older than you."

"Eighty-eight," I corrected him, "and let me just start by telling you you're not allowed to use your age as an argument, okay? Because if you were only allowed to be with people your own age that would limit your pool to maybe one or two other people on the planet, and to be honest I don't think you'd really want to bed them. Bit shrivelled up, and all that. Yes, you're technically a lot older than I am, but you're also not really. Let it go."

"Even if I was the age I look, I'd still be in questionable territory here," he protested weakly, but I shrugged it off. I rolled to my side, propped my head up on my elbow and gave him my most winning smile. 

"Most middle-aged blokes would consider me a catch. A slightly ethnic younger man? I'm in high demand, you know." I didn't want to brave the scary amount of commitment it would imply to refer to myself as the slightly ethnic younger boyfriend. That would be quite a lot to throw around after a bloke spent one night asleep in my bed, and all. 

"I'm nowhere near middle-aged," he said, "and don't refer to yourself like that. You're not some sort of... commodity."

"All right," I said, reaching out to tuck my finger under the neckline of his vest. "But let's look at your other arguments. Yes, you're my superior. It's not like *that's* never happened before, senior officers hitting it off with lower-ranking folk?"

"The frequent occurrence of unacceptable conduct doesn't make it acceptable," Nightingale said wisely. He took my hand, plucked my finger out from his shirt, and brought it up to his mouth to kiss. Mixed signals, that. Very telling.

“Still, we’re a department of two. Who’s gonna tell us off for it?” I argued. He shrugged, kissing the tips of my fingers one by one. It was getting to be a bit distracting, but that seemed to be exactly what he was going for. 

"And yes, yes, I am your apprentice,” I persisted. “But again, that must've happened before?"

"Considering that in my time apprentices were generally about twelve, I sincerely hope it hasn't," he said gravely. He turned my hand over, and pressed a kiss to my palm. 

“Even when they got older? You can’t tell me this didn’t happen all the time. Older apprentices, seducing their teachers in shadowy corridors and dimly lit classrooms, the stuff of kinky romance novels everywhere...”

He sighed, tucking my hand under his chin. “Fine. There were always rumours about someone or other, I suppose. Apprentices and masters do develop a particular sort of bond, I imagine some might be prone to having such things... escalate.” He frowned at his own words, and lifted up my hand again to press one of my knuckles to his lips. 

“It’s very hard to have this talk with you if you insist on making sweet love to my hand like that,” I said, and he grinned at me, my knuckle still pressed to his bottom lip. “Fuck,” I added, the word just sort of escaping me, and that made him laugh.

My self-control only stretched so far, so I tackled him with all the tenderness my early-morning-self could muster. I kissed him messily on the mouth, dragged my lips down his jaw to savour the feel of his morning stubble – a new experience, for me – and licked wetly at his earlobe. I rolled onto him, and his breath was pushed out of him in a low moan. 

If I hadn’t already been as hard as could be, I certainly would have been then. He was, too - I felt it as he spread his legs to allow me between them. He chuckled softly, putting his arms around my neck and pulling me close to kiss me. 

I rolled my hips, grinding us together, and he gasped into my mouth. I pressed my face into his neck and did it again, and he wrapped his bare legs around my waist and met me halfway.

“Good?” I asked, gasping.

“Yes,” he answered, just as breathless as I was, “yes, please.”

Now that was a bit more polite than strictly necessary, but I appreciated the enthusiasm all the same. I found myself wondering if we shouldn’t at least undress, but he was hot and hard and willing underneath me and I was fine where I was.

I floundered into a rhythm, aided by Nightingale bucking his hips up into me in a way I didn’t think I’d ever imagined him able to. Quite wanton, that one, when given the chance, and it made me feel all sorts of giddy to be learning these things about dear Nightingale. 

We rocked, and rubbed together, and the pressure was fantastic even through layers of cotton. I kissed him again, deeply. His fingers dug into my shoulders, snagging on the fabric of my t-shirt, and with every thrust of my hips he made these soft, uncontrolled little sounds across my lips.

_I’m having sex with my boss_ , I thought, almost hysterically, at some point, _and oh God, he’s fucking amazing like this_. 

I came first. I clung to him so tightly I imagine he could barely breathe, and ejaculated messily right into my pyjama bottoms. He bit into my shoulder as I did, T-shirt and all, and I growled low in my throat and returned the favour. He laughed again, and I thrust my hand down and right into his briefs. 

I encountered hard, hot flesh, wrapped my fingers around it and started tugging him off.

“Peter!” he gasped, arching his back off the mattress, and I’m fairly proud to admit I had him climaxing loudly in no time at all. 

When I say loudly, I mean it, too. He was holding absolutely nothing back. He threw his head back, eyes shut, and moaned so beautifully I’d almost wished I’d had the foresight to grab my phone to record it. For future private-time reference, you understand. 

He came down from it laughing again, blinking his eyes open and pressing his forehead to mine. I laughed along with him, ‘cause what else do you do when you just spent a good ten minutes rutting wildly against your governor? 

“You’re lovely,” I muttered. “Absolutely bloody lovely. Should’ve done this ages ago. Fuck me, you’re *lovely*.”

“If I didn’t know any better,” he said, ever-so-slightly hoarse, “I’d say you were drunk. My lord, get off me, you heavy lump.”

I grinned and rolled off him, even if I did keep one vaguely possessive leg slung across his hips. 

He rubbed his hands down his face, then moved them up into his hair and sighed contentedly. He looked so dishevelled, while I was so used to having him composed to a T. I wondered if he looked like this waking up every morning, with his hair all messed up and his jaw rough with stubble, or if the unexpected morning frottage messed him up just a bit more.

I realised I wanted to know. I realised I wanted to wake up with him again tomorrow, and the day after that, and after that it would be Sunday and I definitely wanted to get that day with him just so I could tout it as an excuse to stop him from getting out of bed at all. 

“We need to get up,” he said, perfectly on cue. “Molly should have breakfast ready soon, and I do believe we have two nixies to catch.”

“I don’t suppose we could ask Molly to bring us breakfast in bed?” I tried, kissing his temple. He didn’t even respond to that, just gave me the kind of look from the corner of his eyes that wished me good luck even requesting it from her.

“And you need a bath, because, Peter, while I am not too proud to admit that you, too, are quite lovely to snuggle up to in the early mornings, you smell horribly like pond muck,” he said, and I laughed into his hair.

“You don’t exactly smell like lilies of the valley yourself, sir,” I said. It was true – while the smell of his expensive cologne lingered, and the simple scent that I had filed away as just *him* hovered on his skin, it was all rather overpowered by a decisive whiff of Hampstead Pond. 

“I am aware,” he said, “which is why I intend to have a good, hot bath before breakfast myself.”

“We could share one?” I said hopefully, because by God, I’d now had sex with the guy, but still hadn’t seen him naked. Something had to be done to rectify that, and shortly, please.

“No,” he said simply, turning out of my embrace. He kissed me on the nose, and smiled. “I am going to take a bath, by myself, and so are you, and I will see you at breakfast.”

He got up and put on his bathrobe, already wearing a grin he seemed unable to wipe off his pretty mug. 

“You’re not going to pretend this hasn’t happened, right?” I said, sitting up. “I mean, I’m not going to show up for breakfast to find you’ve decided that this was the worst idea you’ve ever had and you’re going to ignore it until it goes away?”

He looked at me funny for that, like he was trying to decide whether to be offended or just feel sorry for me. It made him come back to me, anyway, putting one knee on the bed and leaning in to kiss me, his fingers on the sides of my face again. “That,” he mumbled against the corner of my mouth, “is the last thing you need to worry about. Promise.”

I smiled, and he kissed me again for that, just for good measure.

“Just one thing, Peter,” he said as he straightened. “Please don’t call me sir, when we’re like this. It’s rather mortifying. I have a name, I’ve even heard you use it yesterday, so... keep at that, would you.”

“Right. Sorry. Habit,” I said. Okay, so I know I’ve expressed some distaste at referring to my governor by his first name before, but that was before I knew what said governor’s face looked like lost in the throes of orgasm. Bit of a game-changer, that, so Thomas it was going to be. “Not even in certain special cases, though?” I asked, and I grinned.

To my surprise, he grinned back. “Maybe. If you play your cards right. Now go get ready for breakfast, would you.”

He left, I plopped back down onto my bed, and spent a good ten minutes trying not to giggle like a schoolgirl because oh, my dear God.

I managed to get up, bathed, and dressed in less than an hour. I struggled a bit getting my day started, rewiring my brain to focus on the case and not on how I’d get Nightingale to sleep with me again that night, but I put on my best professional game face and strolled into the breakfast room like a man in control of his hormones.

But of course Nightingale was already there, and he grinned at me *just so* as I walked in, and I was frankly amazed I made it to the table and didn’t collapse in a barely-contained flurry of oxytocin. 

It was kippers for breakfast, which was exactly what I’d been expecting it to be. I didn’t care, though. I mean, I’d had me some sex that morning. Molly could’ve served me Toby’s kibble and I’d have gobbled it up with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

“I spent some time thinking about the implications of there being two nixies in the pond,” Nightingale said, buttering his toast so innocently you’d never guess he just hooked one of his feet around my ankle underneath the table. “Are you still sure that that’s what you saw?”

“Yes,” I answered, returning the favour by entwining our feet properly. I mean, if we were going to play footsie under the table like a couple of kids at a family reunion, we damn sure were going to do it right. “There were definitely two, I swear, though I'm not sure if they were fighting over me or working together. What gets me is why they would camp out in the same pond? We’re a pretty wet country, I’m sure each of them could find a nice spot of their own.”

He nodded, biting into his toast. "Having two of them does explain the higher number of victims this time. Although I cannot imagine why two nixies would even be interested in sharing territory like that, as you say."

He sipped his tea, and I felt the toe of his shoe slip just inside the leg of my trousers. There was something decidedly naughty about it, in the very controlled, calculated way he was doing this. It was made so much better by his face betraying absolutely nothing. Above the table he was simply the Nightingale I'd always known, polishing off his kippers and talking business, but under the table he was promising me all kinds of sex. I half expected him to slip off his shoe and start massaging my crotch with his foot.

At least he hadn't been lying about me not having to worry he was going to pretend all this hadn't happened. It took all the self-control I had to not jump his surprisingly indecent bones from across the table.

"Good morning, gentlemen!" we were rudely interrupted, as Dr Walid walked cheerfully into the breakfast room. Nightingale all but fell backwards out of his chair, hastily pulling his legs back and nearly knocking over his tea. It'd have honestly been a lot less suspicious if he'd simply kept them where he was, because I doubt Dr Walid would have noticed. He was certainly giving Nightingale a funny look now, and Nightingale forced a smile and nodded at him.

"Good morning, Abdul. I didn't hear you come in."

"Well, that self-opening front door of yours is very useful for sneaking up on unsuspecting wizards. I have the results of the autopsies for you. Always a good topic over breakfast, yeah?" He pulled a thick folder from the leather bag he carried slung across his shoulder, and dropped it on the table. Molly silently swept into the room to bring him a cup of tea, and Nightingale pulled the folder towards him and started leafing through it. 

Full-colour pictures of people's insides didn't seem to bother him much. I, however, was still riding high on a cloud of breakfast foods and covert sexual advances, so I looked away pointedly. 

"Exactly the same conclusion as with Sarah Morris. Their lungs hadn't been used in ages. One of them, though, had defensive bruises on his arms. He fought back. Have you figured out what it is yet? I'm still hoping for mermaids, myself.”

"It's nixies," I said, pushing my empty plate away and putting an extra lump of sugar in my tea. "Two of them, even."

"Nixies?" Dr. Walid asked, looking at me blankly.

"Water hags. Jenny Greenteeth ring a bell?"

"You mean like grindylows? Really?"

Nightingale hadn't been lying when he said these things were known by many names. I shrugged. "Yes. Though they're not the little squiggly things from Harry Potter. Bigger, and decidedly scarier. They almost drowned me last night, if Nightingale hadn't managed to David Hasselhoff me out of the pond."

"What?" he said, and I recounted the tale to him, conveniently leaving out any references to hallucinations, fireplace kisses, or morning frottage. 

Dr Walid looked genuinely offended. "You almost drowned, and didn't bother to call your doctor? If you were underwater for as long as you say you were, there could have been considerable damage done!"

"I'm fine! No brain damage, promise. I started coughing up water as soon as I got out. I didn't even suffer from any significant kind of hypothermia, Nightingale warmed me up just fine with a blanket and a cuppa." And by increasing my heart rate by making out with me, but again, I didn't think Nightingale would appreciate it much if I added that.

"Now that I think about that," Nightingale said, looking up from the autopsy report with a frown, "you must have been underwater for up to seven or eight minutes until I finally got you out. Isn't it a little odd you held on for that long?" 

"I don't know?" I said, thinking I was pretty happy that I had, though.

"Most people don’t last longer than maybe two or three minutes without oxygen, and that's if they've trained extensively for it. Panic will shorten the window, and if you reacted like you said you did, I wouldn't have given you more than maybe one or two. If Thomas didn't manage to pull you out until after eight minutes under, he should by all rights have hauled out a dead man," Dr Walid said.

"I don't know," I simply repeated. "I was pulled under really fast, and my lungs were filled up with water almost immediately, like they forced it right in there. I started fighting back and managed to scare one off and..." I fell silent in the middle of my sentence.

After I scared one of them off, my body had pushed the water in my lungs out again. I only started drowning and experiencing the frightening feeling of oxygen deprivation after that. I felt the facts connecting in my head, like I was Sherlock bloody Holmes. 

"I was drowning because I fought back," I said, both Nightingale and Dr Walid hanging on my every word. "Before I started fighting, I wasn't drowning yet. I endangered myself by fighting. Sarah Morris drowned because she fought back. They would've kept her alive. They would've kept *me* alive." 

I flailed a little, I have to admit. “As soon as they had me under, the water entered my lungs. They did that. They *did* that! It’s a spell, they put you into a kind of prolonged stasis, keeping you alive under the water. It’s breaking that spell that kills you! That’s when you fight back and don’t get back to the surface in time so you drown! You drown because you’re fighting for your life!”

“They use water to expand your lungs, then use some magical means of transporting oxygen into your bloodstream... far-fetched, but clever,” Walid said. “And it would, actually, match the state of the victims’ lungs. Fascinating. I wonder how the spell works.”

Nightingale said nothing. I glanced over at him, and the look of devastation on his face was so great it cut me like a knife. It hit me right away why he was looking like that, and when it did I felt like a right prat for getting so excited. 

Beatrice. Beatrice drowned because she’d fought for her life. Her last minutes alive in this world had been spent in a panic, fighting off a monstrous water hag, and failing to get to the surface in time. 

No wonder the poor thing had left a ghostly impression like she had. No wonder said ghostly impression was so anxious most of the time.

“What purpose would they have to keep victims alive, though?” Dr Walid asked, and we both turned towards him, pulled from our momentary daze.

"The legends say they pull people into the water and drown them, but I don’t know why,” I said. “To eat them?"

“That’s always been the common assumption,” Nightingale said, “but why then let them float to the surface uneaten if they struggle and die?”

“Maybe dead flesh is much less good to eat than live,” I said, making myself feel a bit sick. “Maybe they keep them alive so they can have them around for a longer time... eating them bit by bit. Maybe they can keep them underwater that way for months, or longer.” I didn’t want to say fifteen years, but I was certainly thinking it. 

"Well, that’s ghastly,” Dr Walid said. “Do you think the victims are conscious for it?"

"I sincerely hope not," Nightingale said darkly.

“This does make it even stranger that there’s two of them, though,” I pointed out. “If you’re refilling your underwater pantry of people, why do it for two, rather than just yourself?”

We looked at each other in silence for a few beats, trying to work this out.

“Could they be breeding?” Dr Walid then said, and it was rather like having a cup of ice water poured down the back of my shirt.

They were breeding. There were two of them, and they had found each other, and were preparing to have lots of little baby nixies. 

“My God,” Nightingale said. “They could have a whole busload worth of people down there.” I thought of my lengthy and sadly discarded missing persons list, and my morning just kept on getting less and less cheerful. 

“Wouldn’t people notice that?” Dr Walid asked. “The Hampstead Ponds are crawling with swimmers in the warmer months. You’d expect at least someone would pick up on swimming above the suspended bodies of dozens of people.”

“Not if the nix can cloak them,” I said. “You can’t even see the nix themselves, from above the water. They came at me out of nowhere. Not a big leap to think they can cloak their stash in a similar way.”

I watched him process this, eyebrows raised. Well, it was a lot to take in. I wondered if he knew about Nessie. 

“How do nix breed?” I continued. “Do they lay eggs? Give live birth? Are they gonna spawn like tuna all over the pond?” 

“I have absolutely no idea,” Nightingale said, “But regardless of the outcome, something tells me you and I are going to be the first to document this.”

Oh yes. Just the thing I’d always wanted to go down in history for. 

“I do suggest we take them out before they release their offspring onto the Heath, though,” he said, and I made a face.

“Kill them.”

“Yes. I know you don’t like it, but I see no other option. They’ve killed countless people, Peter. If left to their own devices, they will kill countless more. It’s in their nature.”

I knew he was right, really. I knew these weren’t creatures to be reasoned with. Much like vampires, they lived to kill the people we’d sworn to serve and protect, so what’s an apprentice wizard to do?

“How?” I simply asked. “What happens to the people they may have suspended underwater when we kill the nixies? Will it break whatever spell they’ve used?”

He winced, and I knew I’d touched on something that hadn’t occurred to him yet. “Good point,” he said, “and yes, odds are it will.”

“So everyone will drown. Great outcome. The other option is to find and rescue the people first, *then* kill the nixies.”

“But that leaves us with the problem of finding them when the cloaking spell is still active.” 

Dr Walid sat by, his head moving to and fro like he was watching a tennis match. I reckon it rather felt like it, for him, to watch me and Nightingale work this out together.

"All right,” I said, “if they're using a spell to hide them in the water... can we remove the water?"

Dr Walid looked like he might never recover from that suggestion, but Nightingale was looking at me like he could just about kiss me. It helped that I actually knew what that looked like now, plastered all over his face, and right there it was. 

Dr Walid sighed. “I’d really have liked it better if it had been mermaids.”


	9. Chapter 9

The hardest thing about temporarily removing the water from a popular London pond was getting the paperwork through. We had to close the pond off from the general public for a little while, arrange for some uniforms to make sure nobody came to take a peek despite that, and had to generally convince Seawoll that this was a good idea.

He didn't agree, but was so taken aback by the notion that Nightingale was genuinely capable of taking all of the water out of a pond that size that he signed off on it anyway.

The City of London’s Hampstead Heath Department was less amused, mostly because we couldn't actually tell them what it was we were going to do. We wound up making up an elaborate story about needing to send a couple of divers into the pond to look for Chantou Ray, but they argued that that didn't help us last time. In the end Nightingale politely intimidated them into allowing closing shop early, while I stood by feeling uncomfortably aroused.

The spell was relatively simple. I say 'simple' because it's easy to explain, not easy to perform - it was the kind of higher-order spell I wouldn't even dare to attempt for at least another six or seven years. Nightingale was going to lift all the water out of the pond, and evaporate it. This, he explained to me, should, in theory, create a massive rain-cloud over the Heath, which he should afterwards be able to simply stick back into the pond.

I say 'in theory' because he'd obviously never attempted something like this before. He was quite confident about it, but I just hoped the spell wouldn't backfire and he wouldn't wind up accidentally dumping the entire contents of the Hampstead Ponds across Trafalgar Square. 

I also worried about the implications of evaporating the water. My first assumption was he would, in essence, heat it up to get that kind of chemical reaction, and I had awful visions of us accidentally boiling the nix victims to death. He assured me, however, that he wouldn't be evaporating the water until he'd lifted it out. We could only pray he wouldn't be lifting the victims right on up with it.

Since we didn't actually know how many people we would find in the pond, we didn't know if we could get them out with just the two of us. Nightingale once again called upon the favour of the ever-fabulous Frank Caffrey for that one, and he stood by waiting calmly, a modest throng of broad-shouldered, mean-looking men at his heels. 

Caffrey had asked for very little information on what we were about to do. All he needed to know was that we were going to create a means of getting to the bottom of the pond without the necessity of scuba gear, and that it was his job to remove any and all civilians we might or might not uncover there. He could do that, he said, and shook hands on it. Dead useful, that man. 

We weren't going to be able to perform this trick on all three ponds at once. Nightingale kindly pointed out that that would probably cause his head to explode in a mess of blood and gore, and I, for one, wasn't looking for that kind of dramatic turn to our recently-kindled love affair. 

It didn't take us long to decide on trying our chances with the Kenwood Ladies' Pond, because it seemed the most likely candidate. It was the most secluded. While people had drowned in the other ponds, we saw no reason why the nixies couldn't use all three ponds as hunting grounds while keeping the Ladies' Pond as their main storage, so to speak. 

On top of that, it was where Beatrice was. We couldn't quite pinpoint why that was important, but it was. 

We got to close the pond an hour earlier than usual. This gave us a little under an hour until sunset, which I sincerely hoped was going to be enough. I didn't think this would be that easy to pull off after dark, and while I was pretty proficient with my werelights, there was no way I'd be able to light up the Heath while Caffrey and his men ran back and forth to the bottom of the pond.

Once we'd got it closed, once we'd shooed all the tourists and overeager joggers away, once we'd set up a perimeter and had given Caffrey the instructions he needed, Nightingale and I were standing together at the edge of the pond, on a wooden platform with a little ladder for easy access into the water. It was a clear evening, crisp and quiet, and the water was as still as it had ever been.

"Are you ready for this?" I asked Nightingale.

"Yes. Are you?"

"No," I said, and I sighed. "Be careful, okay? I want to take you home in one piece tonight."

"Much the same to you."

I looked at him from the corner of my eye and smiled, and waited for him to return it. It took him a bit, but he got there eventually, even if it was a particularly skint sort of smile.

"Okay," he said. "Step back, would you? Things are about to get decidedly damp."

I moved back dutifully, feeling oddly excited. I didn't get to see Nightingale perform such high-order magic often. I had the distinct feeling this might kick my new-found crush on him into even worse fanboyish levels. 

He took a deep breath, spread his arms as though he was about to conduct a modest orchestra, and quietly muttered a string of _formae_. I felt him do it - that quick rush of strength, that burst of power I knew to be his _signare_. He then lifted his hands, and with a mighty roar like a sudden waterfall, all the water in the pond lifted with him. 

It looked not unlike a great big brick of water, hovering slightly above ground. Then it started to break up - I wouldn't quite call it evaporate. It looked rather like backwards rain, where drops of water dripped up and up to form a big, dark cloud hovering inconspicuously over the Heath, blotting out the blue evening sky. 

Caffrey and his men, deliciously methodical and not in the least undone by this deeply arousing (to me, anyway) show of higher-order magic, were running before I'd even remembered we had an actual objective for this particular mission. Distracted by Nightingale's _tour de force_ , I'd missed that exposing the bottom of the pond had done exactly what we'd hoped it would do - there were people under there.

A dozen at least, now scattered across the muddy bottom. Their legs were entangled and twisted in thick green weeds. Some of them were already coughing, struggling back to consciousness, but some lay frighteningly still. I spotted Chantou Ray amongst them, supposedly the newest addition, already awake and on the verge of panic. 

I made a run for it, quickly skidding down the slippery side of the pond into the deep. For a fleeting moment I realised that if Nightingale lost control of his spell it would cause over half a million gallons of water to shower down upon my head, but I told myself to trust in his ability and kept on running. By the time I reached Chantou Ray she was screaming and tugging at the plants entwined around her legs.

"I'm the police!" I shouted, though the Met vest should have given that away. "Try to stay still, madam, I'm going to help you!" 

She didn't exactly stay still, but was clever enough to stop screaming. I started tugging at the plants, and once that failed to heroically free her, took my handy-dandy pocket knife out and cut her loose. I helped her to her feet and steadied her, holding onto her trembling hands and saying those calm, controlled, reassuring things they teach you how to say at the academy.

The nix tackling me was a bit of a downer, though. 

It came from my right, screeching at a pitch you’d expect only dogs to be able to really hear, and shoved me right down into the thick mud. Chantou Ray made a run for it – I had to hand it to her, the lady had some fine survival instincts. 

I’d not got quite such a good look at the creature before. It was taller than I’d thought it would be, but mostly arms and legs, long and spindly. Its skin was the same green as pond scum, that slimy shade that reminded me oddly of cat sick. Its hair was black, growing wildly down its head and back.

It was impossible to tell if it was male or female, but either way, it was deeply angry with me. I wondered if it recognised me, and if that was why it was targeting me while Caffrey and his men were still cheerfully getting its victims off to safety. It screeched again, baring its teeth at me. It didn’t have too many of them, but the ones it did have were as long as my fingers and rather resembled rusty nails. 

I punched it in the face. Sometimes the straightforward approach is the best one, and it did appear a bit surprised at my course of action. Sadly for me, this was when the second nix decided to have a go, and then I was battling two. 

I wasn’t quite so successful. I went back down into the mud, and one of them clamped its mouth onto my leg. Wildly, I remembered just in time I was, actually, a wizard, and drew the _forma_ for _impello_ in my head. I aimed it at one of them, and managed to blast it off me.

I didn’t quite dare to do the same to the other one, mostly because that would probably cause it to take a big chunk out of my thigh along with it, considering it was still biting down hard. The pain was unbelievable, the teeth tearing right through my trousers and into my flesh. 

Getting the second nix off my back freed my hands, so I was able to get my baton off my belt to basically start banging away at the nix. I was sharply reminded of Booker and his umbrella, and a manic giggle escaped me. It was amazing that I didn’t scare the nix off with my overall unhinged response to it, really. 

It let go, screeched at me, and I once again hit it in the face. That just made it angrier, and up it came, right for my jugular.

There was a flash, a rush of cold air, and Nightingale blasted it right off of me.

I didn’t know when he came down into the pond, but judging from the mud on his clothes, he’d been there for a while. He looked dishevelled and wide-eyed, sweat beading on his forehead. The spell had taken a lot out of him, and there he was again, conjuring up not one but two fireballs so hot they burned nearly blue and firing them at the nix.

I struggled to my feet, slipping twice in the mud on my injured leg before I managed, and looked around frantically for the second nix. I spotted it just a few yards away, gearing up to join its partner to do whatever it was nixies did when attacked.

So I threw a fireball at it, because it seemed like the best idea at the time. I missed, which was not very glamorous of me, but next to me Nightingale hit his target with both. It was the second nix who screamed at that, not actually the one who got hit.

I took the opportunity to aim another fireball, and hit my target this time. The nix flew back, a black burn across its chest. Next to me, Nightingale did something to the other nix that I didn’t quite recognise, involving a Krav-Maga-ish hand movement and the nix virtually crumpling in on itself. I got the distinct impression Nightingale had just done something to its insides, the implications of which I found so worrying I promptly ignored them.

Which was just as well, because it allowed me to notice it had started raining. Big droplets of water had started to fall down from the dark cloud hovering ominously overhead, faster with every passing second. Nightingale’s spell was slipping, and the cloud was coming down fast.

“Sir!” I cried out, adding a somewhat unsure “Thomas!” for good measure. He turned to me somewhat abruptly, probably befuddled by me using his first name in this situation of all situations, and followed my gaze upwards.

Nightingale wasn’t a man who swore, but had he been, he’d have done it then.

A quick look around confirmed that Caffrey and his men were all either already out of the pond or busy climbing. I gestured at Nightingale, and we made a run for it too.

By the time we started struggling up the slippery, muddy sides of the pond, water was coming down so hard it was not unlike running around under a gigantic shower. It made climbing back up considerably harder, and the two of us kept on sliding back down, grappling for purchase but finding little.

It was, in the end, Caffrey who grabbed me unceremoniously by my collar and pulled me out like a kitten’s mummy mouthing the scruff of its neck. I grabbed Nightingale’s hand and, as the water thundered back into the pond with a deafening roar, the three of us struggled frantically onto the shore on all fours. 

The rest was silence. The pond area looked like it had been hit by a particularly heavy bout of spring rain, but you’d never guess we’d just magically lifted the water to look underneath it the way you check under the sofa for spare change. 

"Wet,” I said hoarsely, sitting up. “Wet again." Caffrey chuckled dryly, and knowing he understood that reference was oddly intimidating. 

One of the nixies came floating to the surface somewhere in the middle of the pond. It was clearly dead, bobbing head-down, and I thought to myself that at least Dr Walid was going to have a good day tomorrow. 

Nightingale stood up with all the grace he could muster. He was dotted in black mud, from head to toe, but stood as well-composed as always, like he was trying to make getting covered in muck appear a stylistic choice rather than an unfortunate side-effect of battling water monsters. 

A part of me wondered if he’d let me into the bath with him this time, to help him clean it off. I, too, felt the sticky itch of mud all the way up, even into my ears, and knew I wouldn’t mind a bit of assistance scrubbing that off.

Caffrey stood and started calling in the emergency services. I stayed where I was, sitting on the ground by Nightingale’s feet so as to not jostle the quietly-bleeding bite on my leg any further, and wondered where we might get a boat to fish the dead nix from the lake.


	10. Epilogue

In the hazy afternoon sunlight the Heath looked like nothing had happened the day before. It had been a fairly pleasant spring day so far, even if the promise of early-evening rain crept up on the edges of the city. The Heath was decidedly green and fresh, and absolutely nothing betrayed that me and Nightingale were up there until well past midnight pulling a nix corpse out of the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond.

Dr Walid had been more than overjoyed when we presented him with it. He seemed to be holding back a little happy dance – I like to think he saved it for after we’d both left, performing some jaunty Scottish jig by the autopsy table. 

Three of the fourteen people we pulled out from underneath the water did not make it through the night. Their injuries had been extensive, and they had been under there for years. Four more were still in critical condition, under the care of some fairly flummoxed physicians on the ICU. 

The others were recovering. The only one able to go home the day after had indeed been Chantou Ray, who had been deeply shaken but, after a night of observation, more than able to go and deal with this particular kind of trauma in the comfort of her own bed. I planned to go see her in a day or two. I was full of questions, after all. 

I got twelve stitches in my leg and a tetanus shot. I’ve had worse. It hurt when I walked, but not enough to stop me walking, even if Nightingale kept telling me off for not taking some extra rest.

We never found the second nix. We didn’t know if my attempts to injure it had proven fatal after all and it had simply crawled away somewhere quiet to die, or if it had sensed defeat and run for it. It might still be in the Heath. It might not be. We didn’t know, and we had no way to find out.

Nightingale didn’t allow me to take that bath with him after all, citing both of us being absolutely too filthy for any sort of intimacy as the reason. I tried my best to poke holes in that argument, but he wouldn’t have it. I did get him once again climbing into my bed that night, clean as a whistle and naked as the day he was born. His skin smelled of soap and sex and magic, and we spent the night doing what I can honestly only give the horribly hackneyed description of making love. 

In the morning he kissed me awake, then buggered off in search of an expensive suit and some hair pomade. We were back at the Heath now under the guise of doing a final check-up, but it was really just us trying to find some kind of closure to this case. 

I’d strolled around the Mixed Pond and the Highgate Men’s Pond, finding nothing but a handful of tourists and a bunch of people doing Tai Chi. I limped up the hill to the Ladies’ Pond, where Nightingale stood gazing out over the water.

He was wearing a handsome blue suit, a light shade that clashed with the dark grey water and the deep green of the foliage surrounding it. Even from behind he looked attractive like that, and I trotted unevenly up to him reminding myself it would be a bit out of order to grab him by the arse as a means of saying hello. 

“All quiet on the eastern front,” I quipped as I moved beside him, clasping my hands behind my back. “Mixed Pond, too. Nothing out of the norm.” 

“Much the same here,” he answered thoughtfully. “Not that I had expected anything less. Even when the nix were both in here, you’d never know looking at it from the surface.”

We stood in silence for a while, some birds squawking indignantly across the pond. A brisk little breeze rustled the leaves on the trees, and I sighed. 

“Do you think the other nix is going to pop up eventually?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Eventually.”

I hoped that ‘eventually’ wouldn’t simply be fifteen years from now, but then, without its underwater stash, would it really be? I thought it perhaps more likely it had simply vacated the premises, after we had rather crudely ripped its territory away from it. 

“Abdul is going to check if the one we killed is the male or the female. I hope it’s the latter. If not...” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. If the one who got away happened to be the female, we still stood a chance of London gaining itself a whole nest of newborn nixies. Maybe not in the Hampstead Heath, but certainly somewhere else. 

He breathed in deeply, and exhaled, looking around the pond. “I tried calling out for Beatrice,” he said. “She didn’t come.”

I let the implications of that sink in, and trod carefully around them. “Perhaps she’s no longer here,” I said. “Maybe what we did, taking out the nix, took care of what she needed taken care of. Maybe she’s moved on.”

He grimaced. “Still so very quaint, Peter.” 

“Quaint, maybe, but why not?”

He didn’t answer. That question probably veered a little too close to theological discussion than he thought appropriate, anyway.

In the distance I heard children playing, their laughter oddly foreign in this place, at this time. It was a safe sound, hopeful. It was the sound of summer heading doggedly our way. It was, in essence, the sound of life getting on with it.

“Sometimes I wonder how we manage to keep on keeping on, with all those things that insist on chipping away at us,” Nightingale mused aloud.

I turned, surprised at so much philosophy, and found him looking at me with odd determination. It was the same look that the little boy in my hallucination had given me, that boy who expressed his disbelief in any kind of heavenly afterlife, that look of stern defiance in the face of loss.

He’d killed the thing that killed his sister. One hundred and five years after the fact, he solved a mystery surrounding a death that everyone, including himself, had always assumed held no mystery at all. I wondered if he felt it that way. I wondered if I’d ever work up the balls to ask him. 

I reached out and took his hand.

“I suppose in the end it’s all a matter of working out how you keep breathing,” I said, his hand warm and strong in mine. He offered me a small smile, and entwined our fingers. 

“We ought to get home,” he said. “I do believe Molly is making crab cakes.”

I snorted out a laugh. We turned, and I held his hand all the way to the car.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [How You Keep Breathing - Deleted Scene](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1867032) by [Linpatootie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linpatootie/pseuds/Linpatootie)
  * [[Cover Art] for "How You Keep Breathing" by Linpatootie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2182836) by [Hamstermoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamstermoon/pseuds/Hamstermoon)




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